[[Vol. 1, Page 574]]

CHAPTER XV.

"STE. — Have we devils here? Do you put
tricks upon us with savages, and men of Inde?" The Tempest,
Act ii., Sc. 2.

"We have now, so far forth as it is requisite for our design,
considered the Nature and Functions of the Soule; and
have plainly demonstrated that she is a substance distinct from
the body." — DR. HENRY
MORE: Immortality of the Soule. 1659.

THE "secret doctrine" has for many
centuries been like the symbolical "man of sorrows"
of the prophet Isaiah. "Who hath believed our report?"
its martyrs have repeated from one generation to another. The
doctrine has grown up before its persecutors "as a tender
plant and as a root out of a dry ground; it hath no form, nor
comeliness . . . it is despised and rejected of men; and they
hid their faces from it. . . . They esteemed him not."

There need be no controversy as to whether this doctrine agrees
or not with the iconoclastic tendency of the skeptics of our times.
It agrees with truth and that is enough. It would be
idle to expect that it would be believed by its detractors and
slanderers. But the tenacious vitality it exhibits all over the
globe, wherever there are a group of men to quarrel over it, is
the best proof that the seed planted by our fathers on "the
other side of the flood" was that of a mighty oak, not the
spore of a mushroom theology. No lightning of human ridicule can
fell to the ground, and no thunderbolts ever forged by the Vulcans
of science are powerful enough to blast the trunk, or even scar
the branches of this world-tree of KNOWLEDGE.

We have but to leave unnoticed their letter that killeth, and
catch the subtile spirit of their hidden wisdom, to find concealed
in the Books of Hermes — be they the model or the copy
of all others — the evidences of a truth and philosophy which
we feel must be based on the eternal laws. We instinctively
comprehend that, however finite the powers of man, while he is
yet embodied, they must be in close kinship with the attributes
of an infinite Deity; and we become capable of better appreciating
the hidden sense of the gift lavished by the Elohim on
H'Adam: "Behold, I have given you everything which is
upon the face of all the earth . . . subdue it,"
and "have dominion"over ALL.

Had the allegories contained in the first chapters of Genesis
been

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 575 THE EDEN OF THE BIBLE AND OF FACT.

better understood, even in their geographical and historical sense,
which involve nothing at all esoteric, the claims of its true
interpreters, the kabalists, could hardly have been rejected for
so long a time. Every student of the Bible must be aware
that the first and second chapters of Genesis could not
have proceeded from the same pen. They are evidently allegories
and parables;* for the two narratives of the creation and peopling
of our earth diametrically contradict each other in nearly every
particular of order, time, place, and methods employed in the
so-called creation. In accepting the narratives literally, and
as a whole, we lower the dignity of the unknown Deity. We drag
him down to the level of humanity, and endow him with the peculiar
personality of man, who needs the "cool of the day"
to refresh him; who rests from his labors; and is capable of anger,
revenge, and even of using precautions against man, "lest
he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life."
(A tacit admission, by the way, on the part of the Deity, that
man could do it, if not prevented by sheer force.) But,
in recognizing the allegorical coloring of the description of
what may be termed historical facts, we find our feet instantly
on firm ground.

To begin with — the garden of Eden as a locality is no myth at
all; it belongs to those landmarks of history which occasionally
disclose to the student that the Bible is not all mere
allegory. "Eden, or the Hebrew
GAN-EDEN, meaning the park or the garden of Eden, is an archaic
name of the country watered by the Euphrates and its many branches,
from Asia and Armenia to the Erythraian Sea."* In the Chaldean
Book of Numbers, its location is designated in numerals,
and in the cipher Rosicrucian manuscript, left by Count St. Germain,
it is fully described. In the Assyrian Tablets, it is
rendered gan-dunyas. "Behold," say the Eloim of Genesis, "the man is become as one of
us." The Eloim may be accepted in one sense for
gods or powers, and taken in another one for the Aleim,
or priests; the hierophants initiated into the good and the evil
of this world; for there was a college of priests called the Aleim,
while the head of their caste, or the chief of the hierophants,
was known as Java Aleim. Instead of becoming a neophyte,
and gradually obtaining his esoteric knowledge through a regular
initiation, an Adam, or man, uses his intuitional faculties,
and, prompted by the Serpent — Woman andmatter
— tastes of the Tree of Knowledge — the esoteric or secret doctrine
— unlawfully. The priests of Hercules, or Mel-Karth, the "Lord"
of the Eden, all wore "coats of skin." The text says:
"And Java Aleim, made for Adam and his wife ,
"CHITONUTH OUR." The first

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* See Paul to the Galatians, iv., 24, and Gospel according to
Matthew, xiii. 10-15.

** A. Wilder says that "Gan-duniyas," is a name of Babylonia.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 576 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

Hebrew word, chitun, is the Greek chiton. It
became a Slavonic word by adoption from the Bible, and
means a coat, an upper garment.

Though containing the same substratum of esoteric truth as every
early cosmogony, the Hebrew Scripture wears on its face the marks
of its double origin. Its Genesis is purely a reminiscence
of the Babylonian captivity. The names of places, men, and even
objects, can be traced from the original text to the Chaldeans
and the Akkadians, the progenitors and Aryan instructors of the
former. It is strongly contested that the Akkad tribes of Chaldea,
Babylonia, and Assyria were in any way cognate with the Brahmans,
of Hindustan; but there are more proofs in favor of this opinion
than otherwise. The Shemite, or Assyrian, ought, perchance, to
have been called the Turanian, and the Mongolians have been denominated
Scyths. But if the Akkadians ever existed otherwise than in the
imagination of some philologists and ethnologists, they certainly
would never have been a Turanian tribe, as some Assyriologists
have striven to make us believe. They were simply emigrants on
their way to Asia Minor from India, the cradle of humanity, and
their sacerdotal adepts tarried to civilize and initiate a barbarian
people. Halevy proved the fallacy of the Turanian mania in regard
to the Akkadian people, whose very name has been changed a dozen
times already; and other scientists have proved that the Babylonian
civilization was neither born nor developed in that country. It
was imported from India, and the importers were Brahmanical Hindus.

It is the opinion of Professor A. Wilder, that if the Assyrians
had been called Turanians and the Mongolians Scyths, then, in
such a case the wars of Iran and Turan, Zohak and Jemshid, or
Yima, would have been fairly comprehended as the struggle of the
old Persians against the endeavors of the Assyrian satraps to
conquer them, which ended in the overthrow of Nineveh; "the
spider weaving her web in the palace of Afrasiab."*

"The Turanian of Prof. Muller and his school," adds
our correspondent, "was evidently the savage and nomadic
Caucasian, out of whom the Hamite or AEthiopian builders come;
then the Shemites — perhaps a hybrid of Hamite and Aryan; and
lastly the Aryan — Median, Persian, Hindu; and later, the Gothic
and Slavic peoples of Europe. He supposes the Celt to have been
a hybrid, analogous to the Assyrians — between the Aryan invaders
of Europe and the Iberic (probably AEthiopic) population of Europe."
In such a case he must admit the possibility of our assertion
that the Akkadians were a tribe of the earliest Hindus. Now,

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* The appropriate definition of the name "Turanian"
is, any ethnic family that ethnologists know nothing about.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 577 TWO REMARKABLE CINGALESE RELICS.

whether they were Brahmans, from the Brahmanic planisphere proper
(40 [[degrees]] north latitude), or from India (Hindustan), or,
again, from the India of Central Asia, we will leave to philologists
of future ages to decide.

An opinion which with us amounts to certitude, demonstrated by
an inductive method of our own, which we are afraid will be but
little appreciated by the orthodox methods of modern science,
is based on what will appear to the latter merely circumstantial
evidence. For years we have repeatedly noticed that the same esoteric
truths were expressed in identical symbols and allegories in countries
between which there had never been traced any historical affiliation.
We have found the Jewish Kabala and the Bible repeating
the Babylonian "myths,"* and the Oriental and Chaldean
allegories, given in form and substance in the oldest manuscripts
of the Siamese Talapoin (monks), and in the popular but oldest
traditions of Ceylon.

In the latter place we have an old and valued acquaintance whom
we have also met in other parts of the globe, a Pali scholar,
and a native Cingalese, who has in his possession a curious palm
leaf, to which, by chemical processes, a timeproof durability
has been given, and an enormous conch, or rather one-half of a
conch — for it has been split in two. On the leaf we saw the
representation of a giant of Ceylonian antiquity and fame, blind,
and pulling down — with his outstretched arms, which are embracing
the four central pillars of a pagoda — the whole temple on a
crowd of armed enemies. His hair is long and reaches nearly to
the ground. We were informed by the possessor of this curious
relic, that the blind giant was "Somona, the Little";
so called in contradistinction with Somona-Kadom, the Siamese
saviour. Moreover, the Pali legend, in as important particulars,
corresponds with that of the biblical Samson.

The shell bore upon its pearly surface a pictorial engraving,
divided in two compartments, and the workmanship was far more
artistic, as to conception and execution, than the crucifixes
and other religious trinkets carved out of the same material in
our days, at Jaffa and Jerusalem. In the first panel is represented
Siva, with all his Hindu attributes, sacrificing his son — whether
the "only-begotten," or one of many, we never stopped
to inquire. The victim is laid on a funeral pile, and the father
is hovering in the air over him, with an uplifted weapon ready
to strike; but the god's face is turned toward a jungle in which
a rhinoceros has deeply buried its horn in a huge tree and is
unable to extricate it. The adjoining panel, or division, represents
the same rhinoceros on the pile

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 578 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

with the weapon plunged in its side, and the intended victim —
Siva's son — free, and helping the god to kindle the fire upon
the sacrificial altar.

Now, we have but to remember that Siva and the Palentinian Baal,
or Moloch, and Saturn are identical; that Abraham is held until
the present day by the Mahometan Arabs as Saturn in the Kaaba;*
that Abraham and Israel were names of Saturn;** and that Sanchoniathon
tells us that Saturn offered his only-begotten son as a sacrifice
to his father Ouranos, and even circumcised himself and forced
all his household and allies to do the same,*** to trace unerringly
the biblical myth to its source. But this source is neither Phoenician,
nor Chaldean; it is purely Indian, and the original of it may
be found in the Maha-Bharata. But, whether Brahmanical
or Buddhistical, it must certainly be much older than the Jewish
Pentateuch, as compiled by Ezra after the Babylonian
captivity, and revised by the Rabbis of the Great Synagogue.

Therefore, we are bold enough to maintain our assertion against
the opinion of many men of learning, whom, nevertheless, we consider
far more learned than ourselves. Scientific induction is one thing,
and knowledge of facts, however unscientific they may
seem at first, is another. But science has discovered enough to
inform us that Sanscrit originals, of Nepaul, were translated
by Buddhistic missionaries into nearly every Asiatic language.
Likewise Pali manuscripts were translated into Siamese, and carried
to Burmah and Siam; it is easy, therefore, to account for the
same religious legends and myths circulating in all these countries.
But Manetho tells us also of Pali shepherds who emigrated westward;
and when we find some of the oldest Ceylonic traditions in the
Chaldean Kabala and Jewish Bible, we must think
that either Chaldeans or Babylonians had been in Ceylon or India,
or the ancient Pali had the same traditions as the Akkadians,
whose origin is so uncertain. Suppose even Rawlinson to be right,
and that the Akkadians did come from Armenia, he did not trace
them farther back. As the field is now opened for any kind of
hypothesis, we submit that this tribe might as well have come
to Armenia from beyond the Indus, following their way in the direction
of the Caspian Sea — a part which was also India, once upon a
time — and from thence to the Euxine. Or they might have come
originally from Ceylon by the same way. It has been found impossible
to follow, with any degree of certitude, the wanderings of these
nomadic Aryan tribes; hence we are left to judge from inference,
and by comparing their esoteric myths. Abraham himself, for all
our scientists can know, might have been one of these Pali shepherds
who emigrated West. He is shown to have gone

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Movers, 86.

** Ibid.

*** Sanchon.: in Cory's "Fragments," p. 14.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 579 GENESIS A COPY OF THE CHALDEAN KABALA.

with his father, Terah, from "Ur of the Chaldees";
and Sir H. Rawlinson found the Phoenician city of Martu or Marathos
mentioned in an inscription at Ur, and shows it to signify
THE WEST.

If their language seems in one sense to oppose their identity
with the Brahmans of Hindustan, yet there are other reasons which
make good our claims that the biblical allegories of Genesis
are entirely due to these nomadic tribes. Their name Ak-ad,
is of the same class as Ad-Am, Ha-va,* or Ed-En — "perhaps,"
says Dr. Wilder, "meaning son of Ad, like the sons
of Ad in ancient Arabia. In Assyrian, Ak is creator and
Ad-ad is AD, the father." In Aramean Ad also means one,
and Ad-ad the only-one; and in the Kabala Ad-ant
is the only-begotten, the first emanation of the unseen Creator.
Adon was the "Lord" god of Syria and the consort
of Adar-gat, or Aster-'t,' the Syrian goddess, who was Venus,
Isis, Istar, or Mylitta, etc.; and each of these was "mother
of all living" — the Magna Mater.

Thus, while the first, second, and third chapters of Genesis
are but disfigured imitations of other cosmogonies, the fourth
chapter, beginning at the sixteenth verse, and the fifth chapter
to the end — give purely historical facts; though the latter
were never correctly interpreted. They are taken, word for word,
from the secret Book of Numbers, of the Great Oriental
Kabala. From the birth of Enoch, the appropriated first
parent of modern Freemasonry, begins the genealogy of the so-called
Turanian, Aryan, and Semitic families, if such they be correctly.
Every woman is an euhemerized land or city; every man and patriarch
a race, a branch, or a subdivision of a race. The wives of Lamech
give the key to the riddle which some good scholar might easily
master, even without studying the esoteric sciences. "And
Ad-ah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents,
and of such as have cattle,"nomadic Aryan
race; " . . . and his brother was Jubal; he was the father
of all such as handle the harp and organ; . . . and Zillah
bare Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass
and iron,"etc. Every word has a significance;
but it is no revelation. It is simply a compilation of
the most historical facts, although history is too perplexed
upon this point to know how to claim them. It is from the Euxine
to Kashmere, and beyond that we must search for the cradle of
mankind and the sons of Ad-ah; and leave the particular garden
of Ed-en on the Euphrates to

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* In an old Brahmanical book called the "Prophecies,"
by Ramatsariar, as well as in the Southern MSS.
in the legend of Christna, the latter gives nearly word for word
the first two chapters of Genesis. He recounts the creation of
man — whom he calls Adima, in Sanscrit, the 'first man'
— and the first woman is called Heva, that which completes life.
According to Louis Jacolliot ("La Bible dans l'Inde"),
Christna existed, and his legend was written, over 3,000 years
B.C.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 580 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

the college of the weird astrologers and magi, the Aleim.* No
wonder that the Northern seer, Swedenborg, advises people to search
for the LOST WORD among the hierophants of Tartary, China, and
Thibet; for it is there, and only there now, although we find
it inscribed on the monuments of the oldest Egyptian dynasties.

The grandiose poetry of the four Vedas; the Books
of Hermes; theChaldean Book of Numbers; the
Nazarene Codex; the Kabala of the Tanaim; the
Sepher Jezira; the Book of Wisdom, of Schlomah
(Solomon); the secret treatise on Muhta and Badha**attributed by the Buddhist kabalists to Kapila, the founder
of the Sankhya system; the Brahmanas;***the
Stan-gyour,****of the Thibetans; all these
volumes have the same ground-work. Varying but in allegories they
teach the same secret doctrine which, when once thoroughly eliminated,
will prove to be the Ultima Thule of true philosophy, and disclose
what is this LOST WORD.

It is useless to expect scientists to find in these works anything
of interest except that which is in direct relation to either
philology or comparative mythology. Even Max Muller, as soon as
he refers to the mysticism and metaphysical philosophy scattered
through the old Sanscrit literature, sees in it naught but "theological
absurdities" and "fantastic nonsense."

Speaking of the Brahmanas, all full of mysterious,
therefore, as a matter of course, absurd, meanings, we find
him saying: "The greater portion of them is simply twaddle,
and what is worse, theological twaddle. No person who
is not acquainted beforehand with the place which the Brahmanas
fill in the history of the Indian mind, could read more than
ten pages without being disgusted."*****

We do not wonder at the severe criticism of this erudite scientist.

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Adak in Hebrew is ,
and Eden, . The first is
a woman's name; the second the designation of a country. They
are closely related to each other; but hardly to Adam and Akkad
— , which are spelled
with aleph.

** The two words answer to the terms, Macroprosopos, or
macrocosm — the absolute and boundless, and the Microprosopos
of the "Kabala," the "short face," or
the microcosm — the finite and conditioned. It is not translated;
nor is it likely to be. The Thibetean monks say that it is the
real "Sutras." Some Buddhists believe that Buddha was,
in a previous existence, Kapila himself. We do not see how several
Sanscrit scholars can entertain the idea that Kapila was an atheist,
while every legend shows him the most ascetic mystic, the founder
of the sect of the Yogis.

*** The "Brahmanas" were translated by Dr. Haug; see
his "Aitareya Brahmanam."

**** The "Stan-gyour" is full of rules of magic, the
study of occult powers, and their acquisition, charms, incantations,
etc.; and is as little understood by its lay-interpreters as the
Jewish "Bible" is by our clergy, or the "Kabala"
by the European Rabbis.

***** "Aitareya Brahmana," Lecture by Max Muller.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 581 HIDDEN MEANING OF SANSCRIT WORDS.

Without a clew to the real meaning of this "twaddle"
of religious conceptions, how can they judge of the esoteric by
the exoteric? We find an answer in another of the highly-interesting
lectures of the German savant: "No Jew, no Roman, no Brahman
ever thought of converting people to his own national form of
worship. Religion was looked upon as private or national property.
It was to be guarded against strangers. The most sacred names
of the gods, the prayers by which their favor could be gained,
were kept secret. No religion was more exclusive than that of
the Brahmans."*

Therefore, when we find scholars who imagine, because they have
learned the meaning of a few exoteric rites from a srotriya, a
Brahman priest initiated in the sacrificial mysteries, that they
are capable of interpreting all the symbols, and have sifted the
Hindu religions, we cannot help admiring the completeness of their
scientific delusions. The more so, since we find Max Muller himself
asserting that since "a Brahman was born — nay, twice-born,
and could not be made, not even the lowest caste, that of
the Sudras, would open its ranks to a stranger." How much
less likely that he would allow that stranger to unveil to the
world his most sacred religious Mysteries, the secret of which
has been guarded so jealously from profanation throughout untold
ages.

No; our scientists do not — nay, cannot understand correctly
the old Hindu literature, any more than an atheist or materialist
is able to appreciate at their just value the feelings of a seer,
a mystic, whose whole life is given to contemplation. They have
a perfect right to soothe themselves with the sweet lullaby of
their self-admiration, and the just consciousness of their great
learning, but none at all to lead the world into their own error,
by making it believe that they have solved the last problem of
ancient thought in literature, whether Sanscrit or any other;
that there lies not behind the external "twaddle" far
more than was ever dreamed of by our modern exact philosophy;
or that above and beyond the correct rendering of Sanscrit words
and sentences there is no deeper thought, intelligible to some
of the descendants of those who veiled it in the morning hours
of earth's day, if they are not to the profane reader.

We do not feel in the least astonished that a materialist, and
even an orthodox Christian, is unable to read either the old Brahmanical
works or their progeny, the Kabala, the Codex of
Bardesanes, or the Jewish Scripture without disgust at
their immodesty and apparent lack of what the uninitiated reader
is pleased to call "common sense." But if we can hardly
blame them for such a feeling, especially in the case of the Hebrew,
and

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Ibid., "Buddhist Pilgrims."

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 582 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

even the Greek and Latin literature, and are quite ready to agree
with Professor Fiske that "it is a mark of wisdom to be dissatisfied
with imperfect evidence"; on the other hand we have a right
to expect that they should recognize that it is no less a mark
of honesty to confess one's ignorance in cases where there are
two sides to the question, and in the solution of which the scientist
may as easily blunder as any ignoramus. When we find Professor
Draper, in his definition of periods in the Intellectual Development
of Europe, classifying the time from the days of Socrates,
the precursor and teacher of Plato, to Karneades, as
"the age of faith"; and that from Philo to the destruction
of the Neo-platonic schools by Justinian — the "age of decrepitude,"
we may be allowed to infer that the learned professor knows as
little about the real tendency of Greek philosophy and the Attic
schools as he understood the true character of Giordano Bruno.
So when we see one of the best of Sanscrit scholars stating on
his own unsupported authority that the "greater portion of
the Brahmanas is simply theological twaddle," we
deeply regret to think that Professor Muller must be far better
acquainted with the old Sanscrit verbs and nouns than with Sanscrit
thought; and that a scholar so uniformly disposed to do justice
to the religions and the men of old should so effectually play
into the hands of Christian theologians. "What is the use
of Sanscrit?" exclaims Jacquemont, who alone has made more
false statements about the East than all the Orientalists put
together. At such a rate there would be none indeed. If we are
to exchange one corpse for another, then we may as well dissect
the dead letter of the Jewish Bible as that of the Vedas.
He who is not intuitionally vivified by the religious spirit
of old, will never see beyond the exoteric "twaddle."

When first we read that "in the cavity of the cranium of
Macroprosopos — the Long-Face — lies hidden the aerial WISDOM
which nowhere is opened; and it is not discovered, and not opened";
or again, that "the nose of the 'ancient of days'
is Life in every part"; we are inclined to regard
it as the incoherent ravings of a lunatic. And when, moreover,
we are apprized by the Codex Nazaraeus that "she,
the Spiritus,"invites her son Karabtanos,
"who is frantic and without judgment," to an unnatural
crime with his own mother, we are pretty well disposed to throw
the book aside in disgust. But is this only meaningless trash,
expressed in rude and even obscene language? No more can it be
judged by external appearance than the sexual symbols of the Egyptian
and Hindu religions, or the coarse frankness of expression of
the "holy" Bible itself. No more than the allegory
of Eve and the tempting serpent of Eden. The ever-insinuating,
restless spirit, when once it "falls into matter," tempts
Eve, or Hava, which bodily represent chaotic matter "frantic
and without judgment." For matter, Karabtanos, is
the son of Spirit, or

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 583 THE SECTS OF SIVA AND VISHNU.

the Spiritus of the Nazarenes, the Sophia-Achamoth,
and the latter is the daughter of the pure, intellectual
spirit, the divine breath. When science shall have effectually
demonstrated to us the origin of matter, and proved the fallacy
of the occultists and old philosophers who held (as their descendants
now hold) that matter is but one of the correlations of spirit,
then will the world of skeptics have a right to reject the old
Wisdom, or throw the charge of obscenity in the teeth of the old
religions.

"From time immemorial,"* says Mrs. Lydia Maria Child,
"an emblem has been worshipped in Hindustan as the type of
creation, or the origin of life. It is the most common symbol
of Siva [Bala, or Maha-Deva], and is universally connected with
his worship. . . . Siva was not merely the reproducer of human
forms; he represented the fructifying principle, the generative
power that pervades the universe. . . . Small images of this emblem
carved in ivory, gold, or crystal, are worn as ornaments about
the neck. . . . The maternal emblem is likewise a religious type;
and worshippers of Vishnu represent it on their forehead by a
horizontal mark. . . . Is it strange that they regarded with reverence
the great mystery of human birth? Were they impure thus
to regard it? Or are we impure that we do not so regard
it? We have travelled far, and unclean have been the paths, since
those old Anchorites first spoke of God and the soul in the solemn
depths of their first sanctuaries. Let us not smile at their mode
of tracing the infinite and incomprehensible Cause throughout
all the mysteries of nature, lest by so doing we cast the shadow
of our own grossness on their patriarchal simplicity."

Many are the scholars who have tried, to the best of their ability,
to do justice to old India. Colebrooke, Sir William Jones, Barthelemy
St. Hilaire, Lassen, Weber, Strange, Burnouf, Hardy, and finally
Jacolliot, have all brought forward their testimony to her achievements
in legislation, ethics, philosophy, and religion. No people in
the world have ever attained to such a grandeur of thought in
ideal conceptions of the Deity and its offspring, MAN, as the
Sanscrit metaphysicians and theologians. "My complaint against
many translators and Orientalists," says Jacolliot, "while
admiring their profound knowledge is, that not having lived
in India, they fail in exactness of expression and in comprehension
of the symbolical sense of poetic chants, prayers, and
ceremonies, and thus too often fall into material errors, whether
of translation or appreciation."** Further, this author who,
from a long residence in India, and the study of its literature,
is better qualified to testify than those who have never been
there, tells us that "the life of several generations would
scarce suf-

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 584 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

fice merely to read the works that ancient India has left us on
history, ethics (morale), poetry, philosophy, religion,
different sciences, and medicine." And yet Louis Jacolliot
is able to judge but by the few fragments, access to which had
ever depended on the complaisance and friendship of a few Brahmans
with whom he succeeded in becoming intimate. Did they show him
all their treasures? Did they explain to him all
he desired to learn? We doubt it, otherwise he would not himself
have judged their religious ceremonies so hastily as he has upon
several occasions merely upon circumstantial evidence.

Still, no traveller has shown himself fairer in the main or more
impartial to India than Jacolliot. If he is severe as to her present
degradation, he is still severer to those who were the cause of
it — the sacerdotal caste of the last few centuries — and his
rebuke is proportionate to the intensity of his appreciation of
her past grandeur. He shows the sources whence proceeded the revelations
of all the ancient creeds, including the inspired Books of
Moses, and points at India directly as the cradle of humanity,
the parent of all other nations, and the hot-bed of all the lost
arts and sciences of antiquity, for which old India, herself,
was lost already in the Cimmerian darkness of the archaic ages.
"To study India," he says, "is to trace humanity
to its sources."

"In the same way as modern society jostles antiquity at each
step," he adds, "as our poets have copied Homer and
Virgil, Sophocles and Euripides, Plautus and Terence; as our philosophers
have drawn inspiration from Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle;
as our historians take Titus Livius, Sallust, or Tacitus, as models;
our orators, Demosthenes or Cicero; our physicians study Hippocrates,
and our codes transcribe Justinian — so had antiquity's self
also an antiquity to study, to imitate, and to copy. What more
simple and more logical? Do not peoples precede and succeed each
other? Does the knowledge, painfully acquired by one nation, confine
itself to its own territory, and die with the generation that
produced it? Can there be any absurdity in the suggestion that
the India of 6,000 years ago, brilliant, civilized, overflowing
with population, impressed upon Egypt, Persia, Judea, Greece,
and Rome, a stamp as ineffaceable, impressions as profound, as
these last have impressed upon us?

"It is time to disabuse ourselves of those prejudices which
represent the ancients as having almost spontaneously-elaborated
ideas, philosophic, religious, and moral, the most lofty — those
prejudices that in their naive admiration explain all in the domain
of science, arts, and letters, by the intuition of some few great
men, and in the realm of religion by revelation."*

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* "La Bible dans l'Inde."

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 585 A PENNSYLVANIA PUNDIT.

We believe that the day is not far off when the opponents of this
fine and erudite writer will be silenced by the force of irrefutable
evidence. And when facts shall once have corroborated
his theories and assertions, what will the world find? That it
is to India, the country less explored, and less known than any
other, that all the other great nations of the world are indebted
for their languages, arts, legislature, and civilization. Its
progress, impeded for a few centuries before our era — for, as
this writer shows, at the epoch of the great Macedonian conqueror,
"India had already passed the period of her splendor"
— was completely stifled in the subsequent ages. But the evidence
of her past glories lies in her literature. What people in all
the world can boast of such a literature, which, were the Sanscrit
less difficult, would be more studied than now? Hitherto the general
public has had to rely for information on a few scholars who,
notwithstanding their great learning and trustworthiness, are
unequal to the task of translating and commenting upon more than
a few books out of the almost countless number that, notwithstanding
the vandalism of the missionaries, are still left to swell the
mighty volume of Sanscrit literature. And to do even so much is
the labor of a European's lifetime. Hence, people judge hastily,
and often make the most ridiculous blunders.

Quite recently a certain Reverend Dunlop Moore, of New Brighton,
Pa., determined to show his cleverness and piety at a single stroke,
attacked the statement made by a Theosophist in a discourse delivered
at the cremation of Baron de Palm, that the Code of Manu existed
a thousand years before Moses. "All Orientalists of any note,"
he says, "are now agreed that the Institutes of Manu
were written at different times. The oldest part ofthe collection probably dates from the sixth century before
the Christian era."*Whatever other Orientalists,
encountered by this Pennsylvania pundit, may think, Sir William
Jones is of a different opinion. "It is clear," he says,
"that the Laws of Manu, such as we possess them,
and which comprise but 680 slokas, cannot be the work attributed
to Soumati, which is probably that described under the name of
Vriddha Manava, or Ancient Code of Manu, which has
not yet been entirely reconstructed, although many passages of
the book have been preserved by tradition, and are often cited
by commentators."

"We read in the preface to a treatise on legislation by Narada,"
says Jacolliot, "written by one of his adepts, a client of
Brahmanical power: 'Manu having written the laws of Brahma, in
100,000 slokas, or distichs, which formed twenty-four books and
a thousand chapters, gave the work to Narada, the sage of sages,
who abridged it for the use

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* "Presbyterian Banner," December 20, 1876.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 586 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

of mankind to 12,000 verses, which he gave to a son of Brighou,
named Soumati, who, for the greater convenience of man, reduced
them to 4,000.' "

Here we have the opinion of Sir William Jones, who, in 1794, affirmed
that the fragments in possession of the Europeans could not be
The Ancient Code of Manu, and that of Louis Jacolliot,
who, in 1868, after consulting all the authorities, and adding
to them the result of his own long and patient research, writes
the following: "The Hindu laws were codified by Manu more
than 3,000 years before the Christian era, copied
by the whole of antiquity, and notably by Rome, which alone has
left us a written law — the Code of Justinian; which
has been adopted as the basis of all modern legislations."*

In another volume, entitled Christna et le Christ, in
a scientific arraignment of a pious, albeit very learned Catholic
antagonist, M. Textor de Ravisi, who seeks to prove that the orthography
of the name Christna is not warranted by its Sanscrit spelling
— and has the worst of it — Jacolliot remarks: "We know
that the legislator Manu is lost in the night of the ante-historical
period of India; and that no Indianist has dared to refuse him
the title of the most ancient law-giver in the world" (p.
350).

But Jacolliot had not heard of the Rev. Dunlop Moore. This is
why, perhaps, he and several other Indiologists are preparing
to prove that many of the Vedic texts, as well as those of Manu,
sent to Europe by the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, are not
genuine texts at all, but mostly due to the cunning tentative
efforts of certain Jesuit missionaries to mislead science, by
the help of apocryphal works calculated at once to throw upon
the history of ancient India a cloud of uncertainty and darkness,
and on the modern Brahmans and pundits a suspicion of systematical
interpolation. "These facts," he adds, "which are
so well established in India that they are not even brought in
question, must be revealed to Europe" (Christna
et le Christ, p. 347).

Moreover, the Code of Manu, known to European Orientalists
as that one which is commented upon by Brighou, does not even
form a part of the ancient Manu called the Vriddha-Manava.
Although but small fragments of it have been discovered by
our scientists, it does exist as a whole in certain temples; and
Jacolliot proves that the texts sent to Europe disagree entirely
with the same texts as found in the pagodas of Southern India.
We can also cite for our purpose Sir William Jones, who, complaining
of Callouca, remarks that the latter seems in his commentaries
to have never considered that "the laws of Manu are restricted
to the first three ages" (Translation of Manu and
Commentaries).

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* "La Bible dans l'Inde."

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 587 HOW OLD IS THE WORLD?

According to computation we are now in the age of Kali-Yug, the
third, reckoning from that of Satya or Kritayug, first
age in which Hindu tradition establishes the laws of Manu, and
the authenticity of which Sir William Jones implicitly accepted.
Admitting all that may be said as to the enormous exaggerations
of Hindu chronology — which, by the bye, dovetails far better
with modern geology and anthropology than the 6,000 years' caricature
chronology of the Jewish Scripture — still as about
4,500 years have elapsed since the fourth age of the world, or
Kali-Yug, began, we have here a proof that one of the greatest
Orientalists that ever lived — and a Christian in the bargain,
not a Theosophist — believed that Manu is many thousand years
older than Moses. Clearly one of two things should happen: Either
Indian history should be remodelled for the Presbyterian Banner,
or the writers for that sheet should study Hindu literature
before trying their hand again at criticism of Theosophists.

But apart from the private opinions of these reverend gentlemen
whose views very little concern us, we find even in the New
American Cyclopaedia a decided tendency to dispute the antiquity
and importance of the Hindu literature. The Laws of Manu,
says one of the writers, "do not date earlier than the
third century B.C." This term is a very elastic one. If by
the Laws of Manu the writer means the abridgment
of these laws, compiled and arranged by later Brahmans to
serve as an authority for their ambitious projects, and with an
idea of creating for themselves a rule of domination, then, in
such a sense, they may be right, though we are prepared to dispute
even that. At all events it is as little proper to pass off this
abridgment for the genuine old laws codified by Manu, as to assert
that the Hebrew Bible does not date earlier than the tenth century
of our era, because we have no Hebrew manuscript older than that,
or that the poems of Homer's Iliad were neither known
nor written before its first authenticated manuscript was found.
There is no Sanscrit manuscript in the possession of European
scholars much older than four or five centuries,* a fact which
did not in the least restrain them from assigning to the Vedas
an antiquity of between four or five thousand years. There
are the strongest possible arguments in favor of the great antiquity
of the Books of Manu, and without going to the trouble
of quoting the opinions of various scholars, no two of whom agree,
we will bring forward our own, at least as regards this most unwarranted
assertion of the Cyclopaedia.

If, as Jacolliot proves, text in hand, the Code of Justinian
was copied from the Laws of Manu, we have first
of all to ascertain the age of the

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* See Max Muller's "Lecture on the Vedas."

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 588 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

former; not as a written and perfect code, but its origin. To
answer, is not difficult we believe.

According to Varro, Rome was built in 3961 of the Julian period
(754 B.C.). The Roman Law, as embodied by order of Justinian,
and known as the Corpus Juris Civilis, was not a code,
we are told, but a digest of the customs of legislation of many
centuries. Though nothing is actually known of the original authorities,
the chief source from which the jus scriptum, or written
law, was derived, was the jus non scriptum, or the law
of custom. Now it is just on this law of custom that
we are prepared to base our arguments. The law of the twelve tables,
moreover, was compiled about A.U.C. 300, and even this as respects
private law was compiled from still earlier sources. Therefore,
if these earlier sources are found to agree so well with the Laws
of Manu, which the Brahmans claim to have been codified in
the Kritayug, an age anterior to the actual Kali-yug,
then we must suppose that this source of the "Twelve
Tables," as laws of custom and tradition, are at
least, by several hundred years, older than their copyists. This,
alone, carries us right back to more than 1,000 years B.C.

The Manava Dharma Sastra, embodying the Hindu system
of cosmogony, is recognized as next to the Vedas in antiquity;
and even Colebrooke assigns the latter to the fifteenth century
B.C. And, now, what is the etymology of the name of Manava
Dharma Sastra? It is a word compounded of Manu; d'harma,
institute; and sastra, command or law. How then
can Manu's laws date only since the third century before our Christian
era?

The Hindu Code had never laid any claims to be divinely
revealed. The distinction made by the Brahmans themselves between
the Vedas and every other sacred book of however respectable
an antiquity, is a proof of it. While every sect holds the Vedas
as the direct word of God — sruti (revelation)
— the Code of Manu is designated by them simply as the
smriti, a collection of oral traditions. Still these
traditions, or "recollections," are among the oldest
as well as the most revered in the land. But, perhaps, the strongest
argument in favor of its antiquity, and the general esteem in
which it is held, lies in the following fact. The Brahmans have
undeniably remodelled these traditions at some distant period,
and made many of the actual laws, as they now stand in the Code
of Manu, to answer their ambitious views. Therefore, they
must have done it at a time when the burning of widows (suttee)
was neither practiced nor intended to be, which it has been
for nearly 2,500 years. No more than in the Vedas is
there any such atrocious law mentioned in the Code of Manu!
Who, unless he is completely unacquainted with the history
of India, but knows that this country was once on the verge of
a

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 589 A ONCE MIGHTY TRANS-HIMALAYAN SEA.

religious rebellion occasioned by the prohibition of suttee
by the English government? The Brahmans appealed to a verse
from the Rig-Veda which commanded it. But this verse
has been recently proved to have been falsified.* Had the Brahmans
been the sole authors of the Code of Manu, or had they
codified it entirely instead of simply filling it with interpolations
to answer their object not earlier than the time of Alexander,
how is it possible that they would have neglected this most important
point, and so imperilled its authority? This fact alone proves
that the Code must be counted one of their most ancient
books.

It is on the strength of such circumstantial evidence — that
of reason and logic — that we affirm that, if Egypt furnished
Greece with her civilization, and the latter bequeathed hers to
Rome, Egypt herself had, in those unknown ages when Menes reigned,**
received her laws, her social institutions, her arts and her sciences,
from pre-Vedic India;*** and that therefore, it is in that old
initiation of the priests — adepts of all the other countries
— we must seek for the key to the great mysteries of humanity.

And when we say, indiscriminately, "India," we do not
mean the India of our modern days, but that of the archaic period.
In those ancient times countries which are now known to us by
other names were all called India. There was an Upper, a Lower,
and a Western India, the latter of which is now Persia-Iran. The
countries now named Thibet, Mongolia, and Great Tartary, were
also considered by the ancient writers as India. We will now give
a legend in relation to those places which science now fully concedes
to have been the cradle of humanity.

Tradition says, and the records of the Great Book explain,
that long before the days of Ad-am, and his inquisitive wife,
He-va, where now are found but salt lakes and desolate barren
deserts, there was a vast inland sea, which extended over Middle
Asia, north of the proud Himalayan range, and its western prolongation.
An island, which for its unparalleled beauty had no rival in the
world, was inhabited by the last remnant of the race which preceded
ours. This race could live with equal ease in water, air, or fire,
for it had an unlimited control over the elements. These were
the "Sons of God"; not those who saw the daughters of
men, but the real Elohim, though in the Oriental Kabala
they have another name. It was they who imparted Nature's
most weird secrets to men, and revealed to them the ineffable,
and now lost "word."

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 590 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

This word, which is no word, has travelled once around the globe,
and still lingers as a far-off dying echo in the hearts of some
privileged men. The hierophants of all the Sacerdotal Colleges
were aware of the existence of this island, but the "word"
was known only to the Java Aleim, or chief lord of every
college, and was passed to his successor only at the moment of
death. There were many such colleges, and the old classic authors
speak of them.

We have already seen that it is one of the universal traditions
accepted by all the ancient peoples that there were many races
of men anterior to our present races. Each of these was distinct
from the one which preceded it; and each disappeared as the following
appeared. In Manu, six such races are plainly mentioned
as having succeeded each other.

"From this Manu Swayambhouva (the minor, and answering to
Adam Kadmon) issued from Swayambhouva, or the Being existing through
himself, descended six other Manus (men typifying progenitors),
each of whom gave birth to a race of men. . . . These
Manus, all powerful, of whom Swayambhouva is the first, have each,
in his period — antara — produced and directed this
world composed of movable and unmovable beings" (Manu,
book i.).

In the Siva-Purana,*it runs thus:

"O Siva, thou god of fire, mayest thou destroy my sins, as
the bleaching-grass of the jungle is destroyed by fire. It is
through thy mighty Breath that Adhima (the first man) and Heva
(completion of life, in Sanscrit), the ancestors of this race
of men have received life and covered the world with their
descendants."

There was no communication with the fair island by sea, but subterranean
passages known only to the chiefs, communicated with it in all
directions. Tradition points to many of the majestic ruins of
India, Ellora, Elephanta, and the caverns of Ajunta (Chandor range),
which belonged once to those colleges, and with which were connected
such subterranean ways.** Who can tell but the lost Atlantis —
which is also

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

** There are archaeologists, who, like Mr. James Fergusson, deny
the great antiquity of even one single monument in India. In his
work, "Illustrations of the Rock-Cut Temples of India,"
the author ventures to express the very extraordinary opinion
that "Egypt had ceased to be a nation before the earliest
of the cave-temples of India was excavated." In short, he
does not admit the existence of any cave anterior to the reign
of Asoka, and seems willing to prove that most of these rock-cut
temples were executed from the time of that pious Buddhist king,
till the destruction of the Andhra dynasty of Maghada, in the
beginning of the fifth century. We believe such a claim [[Footnote
continued on next page]]

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 591 THE TRUE ORIGIN OF THE NAME AMERICA.

mentioned in the Secret Book, but, again, under another
name, pronounced in the sacred language — did not exist yet in
those days? The great lost continent might have, perhaps, been
situated south of Asia, extending from India to Tasmania?* If
the hypothesis now so much doubted, and positively denied by some
learned authors who regard it as a joke of Plato's, is ever verified,
then, perhaps, will the scientists believe that the description
of the god-inhabited continent was not altogether fable. And they
may then perceive that Plato's guarded hints and the fact of his
attributing the narrative to Solon and the Egyptian priests, were
but a prudent way of imparting the fact to the world and by cleverly
combining truth and fiction, to disconnect himself from a story
which the obligations imposed at initiation forbade him to divulge.

And how could the name of Atlanta itself originate with Plato
at all? Atlante is not a Greek name, and its construction
has nothing of the Grecian element in it. Brasseur de Bourbourg
tried to demonstrate it years ago, and Baldwin, in his Prehistoric
Nations and Ancient America, cites the former, who declares
that "the words Atlas and Atlantic have
no satisfactory etymology in any language known in Europe. They
are not Greek, and cannot be referred to any known language of
the Old World. But in the Nahuatl (or Toltec) language we find
immediately the radical a, atl, which signifies water,
war, and the top of the head. From this comes a series of words,
such as atlan, or the border of or amid the water; from
which we have the adjective Atlantic. We have also atlaca,
to combat. . . . A city named Atlan existed when
the continent was discovered by Columbus, at the entrance of the
Gulf of Uraha, in Darien, with a good harbor. It is now reduced
to an unimportant pueblo (village) named Aclo."**

Is it not, to say the least, very extraordinary to find in America
a city called by a name which contains a purely local element,
foreign moreover to every other country, in the alleged fiction
of a philosopher of 400 years B.C.? The same may be said
of the name of America, which may one day be found more
closely related to Meru, the sacred mount in the centre of the
seven continents, according to the Hindu tradition, than
to Americus Vespucius, whose name by the bye, was never Americus
at all, but Albericus, a trifling difference not deemed
worth mentioning till very lately by exact history.*
We adduce the following reasons in favor of our argument:

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[Footnote continued from previous page]] perfectly arbitrary.
Further discoveries are sure to show how erroneous and unwarranted
it was.

* It is a strange coincidence that when first discovered, America
was found to bear among some native tribes the name of Atlanta.

** Baldwin: "Prehistoric Nations," p. 179.

*** Alberico Vespuzio, the son of Anastasio Vespuzio or Vespuchy,
is now gravely [[Footnote continued on next page]]

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 592 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

1st. Americ, Amerrique, or Amerique is the name in Nicaragua for
the high land or mountain range that lies between Juigalpa and
Libertad, in the province of Chontales, and which reaches on the
one side into the country of the Carcas Indians, and on the other
side into the country of the Ramas Indians.

Ic or ique, as a terminal, means great, as cazique,
etc.

Columbus mentions, in his fourth voyage, the village Cariai,
probably Caicai. The people abounded with sorcerers,
or medicine men; and this was the region of the Americ range,
3,000 feet high.

Yet he omits to mention this word.

The name America Provincia, first appeared on a map published
at Basle, in 1522. Till that time, the region was believed to
be part of India. That year Nicaragua was conquered by Gil Gonzales
de Avida.*

2d. "The Northmen who visited the continent in the tenth
century,** a low level coast thickly covered with wood,"
called it Markland, from mark, a wood. The r
had a rolling sound as in marrick. A similar word is
found in the country of the Himalayas, and the name of the World-Mountain,
Meru, is pronounced in some dialects as MERUAH,
the letter h being strongly aspirated. The main idea
is, however, to show how two peoples could possibly accept a word
of similar sound, each having used it in their own sense, and
finding it applied to the same territory.

"It is most plausible," says Professor Wilder, "that
the State of Central America, where we find the name Americ
signifying (like the Hindu Meru we may add) great mountain,
gave the continent its name. Vespucius would have used his surname
if he had designed to give a title to a continent. If the Abbe
de Bourbourg's theory of Atlan as the source of Atlas
and Atlantic is verified, the two hypotheses could agree most
charmingly. As Plato was not the only writer that treated of a
world beyond the pillars of Hercules, and as the ocean is still
shallow and grows sea-weed all through the tropical part of the
Atlantic, it is not wild to imagine that this continent projected,
or that there was an island-world on that coast. The Pacific also
shows signs of having been a populous island-empire of Malays
or Javanese — if not a continent amid the North and South. We
know that Lemuria in the Indian Ocean is a dream of scientists;
and that the Sahara and the middle belt of Asia were perhaps once
sea-beds."

To continue the tradition, we have to add that the class of hiero-

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[Footnote continued from previous page]] doubted in regard to
the naming of the New World. Indeed the name is said to have occurred
in a work written several centuries before. A. Wilder (Notes).

* See Thomas Belt: "The Naturalists in Nicaragua." London,
1873.

** Torfieus: "Historia Vinlandiae Antiquae."

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 593 WHAT RUINED THE ATLANTIS-RACE.

phants was divided into two distinct categories: those who were
instructed by the "Sons of God," of the island, and
who were initiated in the divine doctrine of pure revelation,
and others who inhabited the lost Atlantis — if such must be
its name — and who, being of another race, were born with a sight
which embraced all hidden things, and was independent of both
distance and material obstacle. In short, they were the fourth
race of men mentioned in the Popol-Vuh, whose sight
was unlimited and who knew all things at once. They were, perhaps,
what we would now term "natural-born mediums," who neither
struggled nor suffered to obtain their knowledge, nor did they
acquire it at the price of any sacrifice. Therefore, while the
former walked in the path of their divine instructors, and acquiring
their knowledge by degrees, learned at the same time to discern
the evil from the good, the born adepts of the Atlantis
blindly followed the insinuations of the great and invisible "Dragon,"
the King Thevetat (the Serpent of Genesis?).
Thevetat had neither learned nor acquired knowledge, but, to borrow
an expression of Dr. Wilder in relation to the tempting Serpent,
he was "a sort of Socrates who knew without being
initiated." Thus, under the evil insinuations of their demon,
Thevetat, the Atlantis-race became a nation of wicked magicians.
In consequence of this, war was declared, the story of which
would be too long to narrate; its substance may be found in the
disfigured allegories of the race of Cain, the giants, and that
of Noah and his righteous family. The conflict came to an end
by the submersion of the Atlantis; which finds its imitation in
the stories of the Babylonian and Mosaic flood: The giants and
magicians " . . . and all flesh died . . . and every man."
All except Xisuthrus and Noah, who are substantially identical
with the great Father of the Thlinkithians in the Popol-Vuh,
or the sacred book of the Guatemaleans, which also tells
of his escaping in a large boat, like the Hindu Noah — Vaiswasvata.

If we believe the tradition at all, we have to credit the further
story that from the intermarrying of the progeny of the hierophants
of the island and the descendants of the Atlantian Noah, sprang
up a mixed race of righteous and wicked. On the one side the world
had its Enochs, Moseses, Gautama-Buddhas, its numerous "Saviours,"
and great hierophants; on the other hand, its "natural
magicians" who, through lack of the restraining power
of proper spiritual enlightenment, and because of weakness of
physical and mental organizations, unintentionally perverted their
gifts to evil purposes. Moses had no word of rebuke for those
adepts in prophecy and other powers who had been instructed in
the colleges of esoteric wisdom* mentioned in the Bible. His
denunciations

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

*2 Kings, xxii. 14; 2 Chronicles, xxxiv. 22.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 594 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

were reserved for such as either wittingly or otherwise debased
the powers inherited from their Atlantian ancestors to the service
of evil spirits, to the injury of humanity. His wrath was kindled
against the spirit of Ob, not that of OD.***

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

*** As we are going to press with this chapter, we have received
from Paris, through the kindness of the Honorable John L. O'Sullivan,
the complete works of Louis Jacolliot in twenty-one volumes. They
are chiefly upon India and its old traditions, philosophy, and
religion. This indefatigable writer has collected a world of information
from various sources, mostly authentic. While we do not accept
his personal views on many points, still we freely acknowledge
the extreme value of his copious translations from the Indian
sacred books. The more so, since we find them corroborating in
every respect the assertions we have made. Among other instances
is this matter of the submergence of continents in prehistoric
days.

In his "Histoire des Vierges: Les Peuples et les Continents
Disparus," he says: "One of the most ancient legends
of India, preserved in the temples by oral and written tradition,
relates that several hundred thousand years ago there existed
in the Pacific Ocean, an immense continent which was destroyed
by geological upheaval, and the fragments of which must be sought
in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the principal
isles of Polynesia.

"The high plateaux of Hindustan and Asia, according to this
hypothesis, would only have been represented in those distant
epochs by great islands contiguous to the central continent. .
. . According to the Brahmans this country had attained a high
civilization, and the peninsula of Hindustan, enlarged by the
displacement of the waters, at the time of the grand cataclysm,
has but continued the chain of the primitive traditions born in
this place. These traditions give the name of Rutas to
the peoples which inhabited this immense equinoctial continent,
and from their speech was derived the Sanscrit."(We will have something to say of this language in our second
volume.)

"The Indo-Hellenic tradition, preserved by the most intelligent
population which emigrated from the plains of India, equally relates
the existence of a continent and a people to which it gives the
name of Atlantis and Atlantides, and which it locates in the Atlantic
in the northern portion of the Tropics.

"Apart from the fact that the supposition of an ancient continent
in those latitudes, the vestiges of which may be found in the
volcanic islands and mountainous surface of the Azores, the Canaries
and Cape Verd, is not devoid of geographical probability, the
Greeks, who, moreover, never dared to pass beyond the pillars
of Hercules, on account of their dread of the mysterious ocean,
appeared too late in antiquity for the stories preserved by Plato
to be anything else than an echo of the Indian legend. Moreover,
when we cast a look on a planisphere, at the sight of the islands
and islets strewn from the Malayan Archipelago to Polynesia, from
the straits of Sund to Easter Island, it is impossible, upon the
hypothesis of continents preceding those which we inhabit, not
to place there the most important of all.

"A religious belief, common to Malacca and Polynesia, that
is to say to the two opposite extremes of the Oceanic world, affirms
'that all these islands once formed two immense countries, inhabited
by yellow men and black men, always at war; and that the gods,
wearied with their quarrels, having charged Ocean to pacify them,
the latter swallowed up the two continents, and since, it had
been impossible to make him give up his captives. Alone, the mountain-peaks
and high plateaux escaped the flood, by the power of the gods,
who perceived too late the mistake they had committed.' [[Footnote
continued on next page]]

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 595 SUBTERRANEAN PASSAGES IN PERU.

The ruins which cover both Americas, and are found on many West
Indian islands, are all attributed to the submerged Atlantians.
As well as the hierophants of the old world, which in the days
of Atlantis was almost connected with the new one by land, the
magicians of the now submerged country had a net-work of subterranean
passages running in all directions. In connection with those mysterious
catacombs we will now give a curious story told to us by a Peruvian,
long since dead, as we were travelling together in the interior
of his country. There must be truth in it; as it was afterward
confirmed to us by an Italian gentleman who had seen the place
and who, but for lack of means and time, would have verified the
tale himself, at least partially. The informant of the Italian
was an old priest, who had had the secret divulged to him, at
confession, by a Peruvian Indian. We may add, moreover, that the
priest was com-

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[Footnote continued from previous page]] "Whatever there
may be in these traditions, and whatever may have been the place
where a civilization more ancient than that of Rome, of Greece,
of Egypt, and of India was developed, it is certain that this
civilization did exist, and that it is highly important for science
to recover its traces, however feeble and fugitive they may be"
(pp. 13-15).

This last tradition, translated by Louis Jacolliot from the Sanscrit
manuscripts, corroborates the one we have given from the "Records
of the Secret Doctrine." The war mentioned between the yellow
and the black men, relates to a struggle between the "sons
of God" and the "sons of giants," or the inhabitants
and magicians of the Atlantis.

The final conclusion of M. Jacolliot, who visited personally all
the islands of Polynesia, and devoted years to the study of the
religion, language, and traditions of nearly all the peoples,
is as follows:

"As to the Polynesian continent which disappeared at the
time of the final geological cataclysms, its existence rests on
such proofs that to be logical we can doubt no longer.

"The three summits of this continent, Sandwich Islands, New
Zealand, Easter Island, are distant from each other from fifteen
to eighteen hundred leagues, and the groups of intermediate islands,
Viti, Samoa, Tonga, Foutouna, Ouvea, Marquesas, Tahiti, Pournouton,
Gambiers, are themselves distant from these extreme points from
seven or eight hundred to one thousand leagues.

"All navigators agree in saying that the extreme and the
central groups could never have communicated in view of their
actual geographical position, and with the insufficient means
they had at hand. It is physically impossible to cross such distances
in a pirogue . . . without a compass, and travel months without
provisions.

"On the other hand, the aborigines of the Sandwich Islands,
of Viti, of New Zealand, of the central groups, of Samoa, Tahiti,
etc., had never known each other, had never heard of each
other before the arrival of the Europeans. And yet, each
of these people maintained that their island had at one time formed
a part of an immense stretch of land which extended toward the
West, on the side of Asia. And all, brought together, were
found to speak the same language, to have the same usages, the
same customs, the same religious belief. And all to the question,
'Where is the cradle of your race?' for sole response, extended
their hand toward the setting sun"(Ibid.,
p. 308).

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 596 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

pelled to make the revelation, being at the time completely under
the mesmeric influence of the traveller.

The story concerns the famous treasures of the last of the Incas.
The Peruvian asserted that since the well-known and miserable
murder of the latter by Pizarro, the secret had been known to
all the Indians, except the Mestizos who could not be
trusted. It runs thus: The Inca was made prisoner, and his wife
offered for his liberation a room full of gold, "from the
floor up to the ceiling, as high up as his conqueror could reach"
before the sun would set on the third day. She kept her promise,
but Pizarro broke his word, according to Spanish practice. Marvelling
at the exhibition of such treasures, the conqueror declared that
he would not release the prisoner, but would murder him, unless
the queen revealed the place whence the treasure came. He had
heard that the Incas had somewhere an inexhaustible mine; a subterranean
road or tunnel running many miles under ground, where were kept
the accumulated riches of the country. The unfortunate queen begged
for delay, and went to consult the oracles. During the sacrifice,
the chief-priest showed her in the consecrated "black mirror"*
the unavoidable murder of her husband, whether she delivered the
treasures of the crown to Pizarro or not. Then the queen gave
the order to close the entrance, which was a door cut in the rocky
wall of a chasm. Under the direction of the priest and magicians,
the chasm was accordingly filled to the top with huge masses of
rock, and the surface covered over so as to conceal the work.
The Inca was murdered by the Spaniards and his unhappy queen committed
suicide. Spanish greed overreached itself and the secret of the
buried treasures was locked in the breasts of a few faithful Peruvians.

Our Peruvian informant added that in consequence of certain indiscretions
at various times, persons had been sent by different governments
to search for the treasure under the pretext of scientific exploration.
They had rummaged the country through, but without realizing their
object. So far this tradition is corroborated by the reports of
Dr. Tschuddi and other historians of Peru. But there are certain
additional details which we are not aware have been made public
before now.

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* These "magic mirrors," generally black, are another
proof of the universality of an identical belief. In India these
mirrors are prepared in the province of Agra and are also fabricated
in Thibet and China. And we find them in Ancient Egypt, from whence,
according to the native historian quoted by Brasseur de Bourbourg,
the ancestors of the Quiches brought them to Mexico; the Peruvian
sun-worshippers also used it. When the Spaniards had landed, says
the historian, the King of the Quiches, ordered his priests to
consult the mirror, in order to learn the fate of his kingdom.
"The demon reflected the present and the future
as in a mirror," he adds (De Bourbourg: "Mexique,"
p. 184).

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 597 A SECRET NOW FIRST TOLD.

Several years after hearing the story, and its corroboration by
the Italian gentleman, we again visited Peru. Going southward
from Lima, by water, we reached a point near Arica at sunset,
and were struck by the appearance of an enormous rock, nearly
perpendicular, which stood in mournful solitude on the shore,
apart from the range of the Andes. It was the tomb of the Incas.
As the last rays of the setting sun strike the face of the rock,
one can make out, with an ordinary opera-glass, some curious hieroglyphics
inscribed on the volcanic surface.

When Cusco was the capital of Peru, it contained a temple of the
sun, famed far and near for its magnificence. It was roofed with
thick plates of gold, and the walls were covered with the same
precious metal; the eave-troughs were also of solid gold. In the
west wall the architects had contrived an aperture in such a way
that when the sunbeams reached it, it focused them inside the
building. Stretching like a golden chain from one sparkling point
to another, they encircled the walls, illuminating the grim idols,
and disclosing certain mystic signs at other times invisible.
It was only by understanding these hieroglyphics — identical
with those which may be seen to this day on the tomb of the Incas
— that one could learn the secret of the tunnel and its approaches.
Among the latter was one in the neighborhood of Cusco, now masked
beyond discovery. This leads directly into an immense tunnel which
runs from Cusco to Lima, and then, turning southward, extends
into Bolivia. At a certain point it is intersected by a royal
tomb. Inside this sepulchral chamber are cunningly arranged two
doors; or, rather, two enormous slabs which turn upon pivots,
and close so tightly as to be only distinguishable from the other
portions of the sculptured walls by the secret signs, whose key
is in the possession of the faithful custodians. One of these
turning slabs covers the southern mouth of the Liman tunnel —
the other, the northern one of the Bolivian corridor. The latter,
running southward, passes through Trapaca and Cobijo, for Arica
is not far away from the little river called Pay'quina,* which
is the boundary between Peru and Bolivia.

Not far from this spot stand three separate peaks which form a
curious triangle; they are included in the chain of the Andes.
According to tradition the only practicable entrance to the corridor
leading northward is in one of these peaks; but without the secret
of its landmarks, a regiment of Titans might rend the rocks in
vain in the attempt to find it. But even were some one to gain
an entrance and find his way as far as the turning slab in the
wall of the sepulchre, and attempt to blast it out,

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Pay'quina, or Payaquina, so called because its waves
used to drift particles of gold from the Brazil. We found a few
specks of genuine metal in a handful of sand that we brought back
to Europe.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 598 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

the superincumbent rocks are so disposed as to bury the tomb,
its treasures, and — as the mysterious Peruvian expressed it
to us — "a thousand warriors" in one common ruin. There
is no other access to the Arica chamber but through the door in
the mountain near Pay'quina. Along the entire length of the corridor,
from Bolivia to Lima and Cusco, are smaller hiding places filled
with treasures of gold and precious stone, the accumulations of
many generations of Incas, the aggregate value of which is incalculable.

We have in our possession an accurate plan of the tunnel, the
sepulchre, and the doors, given to us at the time by the old Peruvian.
If we had ever thought of profiting by the secret, it would have
required the cooperation of the Peruvian and Bolivian governments
on an extensive scale. To say nothing of physical obstacles, no
one individual or small party could undertake such an exploration
without encountering the army of smugglers and brigands with which
the coast is infested; and which, in fact, includes nearly the
whole population. The mere task of purifying the mephitic air
of the tunnel, which had not been entered for centuries, would
also be a serious one. There, however, the treasure lies, and
there the tradition says it will lie till the last vestige of
Spanish rule disappears from the whole of North and South America.

The treasures exhumed by Dr. Schliemann at Mycenae, have awakened
popular cupidity, and the eyes of adventurous speculators are
being turned toward the localities where the wealth of ancient
peoples is supposed to be buried, in crypt or cave, or beneath
sand or alluvial deposit. Around no other locality, not even Peru,
hang so many traditions as around the Gobi Desert. In Independent
Tartary this howling waste of shifting sand was once, if report
speaks correctly, the seat of one of the richest empires the world
ever saw. Beneath the surface are said to lie such wealth in gold,
jewels, statuary, arms, utensils, and all that indicates civilization,
luxury, and fine arts, as no existing capital of Christendom can
show to-day. The Gobi sand moves regularly from east to west before
terrific gales that blow continually. Occasionally some of the
hidden treasures are uncovered, but not a native dare touch them,
for the whole district is under the ban of a mighty spell. Death
would be the penalty. Bahti — hideous, but faithful gnomes —
guard the hidden treasures of this prehistoric people, awaiting
the day when the revolution of cyclic periods shall again cause
their story to be known for the instruction of mankind.

According to local tradition, the tomb of Ghengiz Khan still exists
near Lake Tabasun Nor. Within lies the Mongolian Alexander, as
though asleep. After three more centuries he will awake and lead
his people to new victories and another harvest of glory. Though
this prophetic

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 599 THE PRICELESS REWARD OF HIOUEN-THSANG.

tradition be received with ever so many grains of salt, we can
affirm as a fact that the tomb itself is no fiction, nor has its
amazing richness been exaggerated.

The district of the Gobi wilderness and, in fact, the whole area
of Independent Tartary and Thibet is jealously guarded against
foreign intrusion. Those who are permitted to traverse it are
under the particular care and pilotage of certain agents of the
chief authority, and are in duty bound to convey no intelligence
respecting places and persons to the outside world. But for this
restriction, even we might contribute to these pages accounts
of exploration, adventure, and discovery that would be read with
interest. The time will come, sooner or later, when the dreadful
sand of the desert will yield up its long-buried secrets, and
then there will indeed be unlooked-for mortifications for our
modern vanity.

"The people of Pashai,"* says Marco Polo, the daring
traveller of the thirteenth century, "are great adepts in
sorceries and the diabolic arts." And his learned
editor adds: "This Pashai, or Udyana, was the native country
of Padma Sambhava, one of the chief apostles of lamaism, i.e.,
of Thibetan Buddhism, and a great master of enchantments. The
doctrines of Sakya, as they prevailed in Udyana in old times,
were probably strongly tinged with Sivaitic magic, and the
Thibetans still regard the locality as the classic ground of sorcery
and witchcraft."

The "old times" are just like the "modern times";
nothing is changed as to magical practices except that they have
become still more esoteric and arcane, and that the caution of
the adepts increases in proportion to the traveller's curiosity.
Hiouen-Thsang says of the inhabitants: "The men . . . are
fond of study, but pursue it with no ardor. The science of
magical formulae has become a regular professional business with
them."**We will not contradict the venerable
Chinese pilgrim on this point, and are willing to admit that in
the seventh century some people made "a professional
business" of magic; so, also, do some people now,
but certainly not the true adepts. It is not Hiouen-Thsang, the
pious, courageous man, who risked his life a hundred times to
have the bliss of perceiving Buddha's shadow in the cave of Peshawer,
who would have accused the holy lamas and monkish thaumaturgists
of "making a professional business" of showing it to
travellers. The injunction of Gautama, contained in his answer
to King Prasenagit, his protector, who called on him to perform
miracles, must have been ever

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* The regions somewhere about Udyana and Kashmere,
as the translator and editor of Marco Polo (Colonel Yule),
believes. Vol. i., p. 173.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 600 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

present to the mind of Hiouen-Thsang. "Great king,"
said Gautama, "I do not teach the law to my pupils, telling
them 'go, ye saints, and before the eyes of the Brahmans and householders
perform, by means of your supernatural powers, miracles greater
than any man can perform.' I tell them, when I teach them the
law, 'Live, ye saints, hiding your good works, and showing
your sins.'"

Struck with the accounts of magical exhibitions witnessed and
recorded by travellers of every age who had visited Tartary and
Thibet, Colonel Yule comes to the conclusion that the natives
must have had "at their command the whole encyclopaedia of
modern 'Spiritualists.' Duhalde mentions among their sorceries
the art of producing by their invocations the figures of Laotsen*
and their divinities in the air, and of making a
pencil write answers to questions without anybody touching it."**

The former invocations pertain to religious mysteries of their
sanctuaries; if done otherwise, or for the sake of gain, they
are considered sorcery, necromancy, and strictly forbidden.
The latter art, that of making a pencil write without contact,
was known and practiced in China and other countries centuries
before the Christian era. It is the A B C of magic in those countries.

When Hiouen-Thsang desired to adore the shadow of Buddha, it was
not to "professional magicians" that he resorted, but
to the power of his own soul-invocation; the power of prayer,
faith, and contemplation. All was dark and dreary near the cavern
in which the miracle was alleged to take place sometimes. Hiouen-Thsang
entered and began his devotions. He made 100 salutations, but
neither saw nor heard anything. Then, thinking himself too sinful,
he cried bitterly, and despaired. But as he was going to give
up all hope, he perceived on the eastern wall a feeble light,
but it disappeared. He renewed his prayers, full of hope this
time, and again he saw the light, which flashed and disappeared
again. After this he made a solemn vow: he would not leave the
cave till he had the rapture to see at last the shadow of the
"Venerable of the Age." He had to wait longer after
this, for only after 200 prayers was the dark cave suddenly "bathed
in light, and the shadow of Buddha, of a brilliant white color,
rose majestically on the wall, as when the clouds suddenly open,
and, all at once, display the marvellous image of the 'Mountain
of Light.' A dazzling splendor lighted up the features of the
divine countenance. Hiouen-Thsang was lost in contemplation and
wonder, and would not turn his eyes away from the sublime and
incom-

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Lao-tsi, the Chinese philosopher.

** "The Book of Ser Marco Polo," vol. i., p. 318. See
also, in this connection, the experiments of Mr. Crookes, described
in chapter vi. of this work.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 601 A PRETTY CHINESE LEGEND.

parable object." Hiouen-Thsang adds in his own diary, See-yu-kee,
that it is only when man prays with sincere faith, and if
he has received from above a hidden impression, that he sees the
shadow clearly, but he cannot enjoy the sight for any length of
time.*

Those who are so ready to accuse the Chinese of irreligion will
do well to read Schott's Essays on Buddhism in China and Upper
Asia.**"In the years Yuan-yeu of
the Sung (A.D. 1086-1093) a pious matron with her two servants
lived entirely to the Land of Enlightenment. One of the maids
said one day to her companion: 'To-night I shall pass over to
the Realm of Amita' (Buddha). The same night a balsamic odor filled
the house, and the maid died without any preceding illness. On
the following day the surviving maid said to her lady: 'Yesterday
my deceased companion appeared to me in a dream, and said: "Thanks
to the persevering supplications of our dear mistress, I am become
an inhabitant of Paradise, and my blessedness is past all expression
in words." ' The matron replied: 'If she will appear to me
also, then will I believe all you say.' The next night the deceased
really appeared to her. The lady asked: 'May I, for once, visit
the Land of Enlightenment?' 'Yea,' answered the blessed soul;
'thou hast but to follow thine hand-maiden.' The lady followed
her (in her dream), and soon perceived a lake of immeasurable
expanse, overspread with innumerable red and white lotus flowers,
of various sizes, some blooming, some fading. She asked what those
flowers might signify? The maiden replied: 'These are all human
beings on the Earth whose thoughts are turned to the Land of Enlightenment.
The very first longing after the Paradise of Amita produces a
flower in the Celestial Lake, and this becomes daily larger and
more glorious as the self-improvement of the person whom it represents
advances; in the contrary case, it loses in glory and fades away.'***
The matron desired to know the name of an enlightened one who
reposed on one of the flowers, clad in a waving and wondrously
glistening raiment. Her whilom maiden answered: 'That is Yang-kie.'
Then asked she the name of another, and was answered: 'That is
Mahu.'

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Max Muller: "Buddhist Pilgrims."

** Berlin Academy of Sciences, 1846.

*** Colonel Yule makes a remark in relation to the above Chinese
mysticism which for its noble fairness we quote most willingly.
"In 1871," he says, "I saw in Bond street an exhibition
of the (so-called) 'spirit' drawings, i.e., drawings
executed by a 'medium' under extraneous and invisible guidance.
A number of these extraordinary productions (for extraordinary
they were undoubtedly) professed to represent the 'Spiritual Flowers'
of such and such persons; and the explanation of these as presented
in the catalogue was in substance exactly that given in the text.
It is highly improbable that the artist had any cognizance of
Schott's Essays, and the coincidence was certainly very striking"
("The Book of Ser Marco Polo," vol. i., p. 444).

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 602 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

The lady then said: 'At what place shall I hereafter come into
existence?' Then the Blessed Soul led her a space further, and
showed her a hill that gleamed with gold and azure. 'Here,' said
she, 'is your future abode. You will belong to the first order
of the blessed.' When the matron awoke, she sent to inquire for
Yang-kie and Mahu. The first was already departed; the other still
alive and well. And thus the lady learned that the soul of one
who advances in holiness and never turns back, may be already
a dweller in the Land of Enlightenment, even though the body still
sojourn in this transitory world."

In the same essay, another Chinese story is translated, and to
the same effect: "I knew a man," says the author, "who
during his life had killed many living beings, and was at last
struck with an apoplexy. The sorrows in store for his sin-laden
soul pained me to the heart; I visited him, and exhorted him to
call on the Amita; but he obstinately refused. His illness clouded
his understanding; in consequence of his misdeeds he had become
hardened. What was before such a man when once his eyes were closed?
In this life the night followeth the day, and the winter followeth
the summer; that, all men are aware of. But that life is followed
by death, no man will consider. Oh, what blindness and obduracy
is this!" (p. 93.)

These two instances of Chinese literature hardly strengthen the
usual charge of irreligion and total materialism brought against
the nation. The first little mystical story is full of spiritual
charm, and would grace any Christian religious book. The second
is as worthy of praise, and we have but to replace "Amita"
with "Jesus" to have a highly Orthodox tale, as regards
religious sentiments and code of philosophical morality. The following
instance is still more striking, and we quote it for the benefit
of Christian revivalists:

"Hoang-ta-tie, of T'anchen, who lived under the Sung, followed
the craft of a blacksmith. Whenever he was at his work he used
to call, without intermission, on the name of Amita Buddha. One
day he handed to his neighbors the following verses of his own
composition to be spread about: —

'Ding dong! The hammer-strokes fall long and fast,
Until the iron turns to steel at last!
Now shall the long, long day of rest begin,
The Land of Bliss Eternal calls me in!'

"Thereupon he died. But his verses spread all over Honan,
and many learned to call upon Buddha."*

To deny to the Chinese or any people of Asia, whether Central,

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Schott: "Essay on Buddhism," p. 103.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 603 THE TRICKY GOBLINS OF THE DESERT.

Upper, or Lower, the possession of any knowledge, or even perception
of spiritual things, is perfectly ridiculous. From one end to
the other the country is full of mystics, religious philosophers,
Buddhist saints, and magicians. Belief in a spiritual
world, full of invisible beings who, on certain occasions, appear
to mortals objectively, is universal. "According to the belief
of the nations of Central Asia," remarks I. J. Schmidt, "the
earth and its interior, as well as the encompassing atmosphere,
are filled with spiritual beings, which exercise an influence,
partly beneficent, partly malignant, on the whole of organic and
inorganic nature. . . . Especially are deserts and other wild
or uninhabited tracts, or regions in which the influences of nature
are displayed on a gigantic and terrible scale, regarded as the
chief abode or rendezvous of evil spirits. And hence the steppes
of Turan, and in particular the great sandy Desert of Gobi have
been looked on as the dwelling-place of malignant beings, from
days of hoary antiquity."

Marco Polo — as a matter of course — mentions more than once
in his curious book of Travels, these tricky nature-spirits
of the deserts. For centuries, and especially in the last one,
had his strange stories been completely rejected. No one would
believe him when he said he had witnessed, time and again, with
his own eyes, the most wonderful feats of magic performed by the
subjects of Kublai-Khan and adepts of other countries. On his
death-bed Marco was strongly urged to retract his alleged "falsehoods";
but he solemnly swore to the truth of what he said, adding that
"he had not told one-half of what he had really
seen!" There is now no doubt that he spoke the truth, since
Marsden's edition, and that of Colonel Yule have appeared. The
public is especially beholden to the latter for bringing forward
so many authorities corroborative of Marco's testimony, and explaining
some of the phenomena in the usual way, for he makes it plain
beyond question that the great traveller was not only a veracious
but an exceedingly observant writer. Warmly defending his author,
the conscientious editor, after enumerating more than one hitherto
controverted and even rejected point in the Venetian's Travels,
concludes by saying: "Nay, the last two years have thrown
a promise of light even on what seemed the wildest of
Marco's stories, and the bones of a veritable RUC
from New Zealand lie on the table of Professor Owen's cabinet!"*

The monstrous bird of the Arabian Nights, or "Arabian
Mythology," as Webster calls the Ruc (or Roc), having
been identified, the next thing in order is to discover and
recognize that Aladdin's magical lamp has also certain
claims to reality.

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* "The Book of Ser Marco Polo," vol. i., Preface to
the second edition, p. viii.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 604 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

Describing his passage through the great desert of Lop, Marco
Polo speaks of a marvellous thing, "which is that, when travellers
are on the move by night . . . they will hear spirits talking.
Sometimes the spirits will call him by name . . . even in the
daytime one hears these spirits talking. And sometimes you shall
hear the sound of a variety of musical instruments, and still
more commonly the sound of drums."*

In his notes, the translator quotes the Chinese historian, Matwanlin,
who corroborates the same. "During the passage of this wilderness
you hear sounds," says Matwanlin, "sometimes of singing,
sometimes of wailing; and it has often happened that travellers
going aside to see what those sounds might be, have strayed from
their course and been entirely lost; for they were voices of spirits
and goblins."** "These goblins are not peculiar to the
Gobi," adds the editor, "though that appears to have
been their most favored haunt. The awe of the vast and solitary
desert raises them in all similar localities."

Colonel Yule would have done well to consider the possibility
of serious consequences arising from the acceptance of his theory.
If we admit that the weird cries of the Gobi are due to the awe
inspired "by the vast and solitary desert," why should
the goblins of the Gadarenes (Luke viii. 29) be entitled
to any better consideration? and why may not Jesus have been self-deceived
as to his objective tempter during the forty days' trial in the
"wilderness"? We are quite ready to receive or reject
the theory enunciated by Colonel Yule, but shall insist upon its
impartial application to all cases. Pliny speaks of the phantoms
that appear and vanish in the deserts of Africa;*** AEthicus,
the early Christian cosmographer, mentions, though incredulous,
the stories that were told of the voices of singers and revellers
in the desert; and "Mas'udi tells of the ghuls, which
in the deserts appear to travellers by night and in lonely hours";
and also of "Apollonius of Tyana and his companions, who,
in a desert near the Indus by moonlight, saw an empusa or
ghul taking many forms. . . . They revile it, and it goes off
uttering shrill cries."**** And Ibn Batuta relates a like
legend of the Western Sahara: "If the messenger be solitary,
the demons sport with him and fascinate him, so that he strays
from his course and perishes."***** Now if all these matters
are capable of a "rational explanation," and we do not
doubt it as regards most of these cases, then, the Bible-devils
of the wilderness deserve no more consideration, but should have
the same rule applied to them. They, too, are creatures of terror,
imagination, and superstition;

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 605 THE MUSICAL SAND OF CALIFORNIA.

hence, the narratives of the Bible must be false; and
if one single verse is false, then a cloud is thrown upon the
title of all the rest to be considered divine revelation.
Once admit this, and this collection of canonical documents is
at least as amenable to criticism as any other book of stories.*

There are many spots in the world where the strangest phenomena
have resulted from what was later ascertained to be natural physical
causes. In Southern California there are certain places on the
sea-shore where the sand when disturbed produces a loud musical
ring. It is known as the "musical sand," and the phenomenon
is supposed to be of an electrical nature. "The sound of
musical instruments, chiefly of drums, is a phenomenon of another
class, and is really produced in certain situations among sandhills
when the sand is disturbed," says the editor of Marco
Polo. "A very striking account of a phenomenon of this
kind, regarded as supernatural, is given by Friar Odoric,
whose experience I have traced to the Reg Ruwan or flowing sand
north of Kabul. Besides this celebrated example . . . I have noted
that equally well-known one of the Jibal Nakics, or 'Hill
of the Bell' in the Sinai desert; . . . Gibalul-Thabul, or hill
of the drums. . . . A Chinese narrative of the tenth century mentions
the phenomenon as known near Kwachau, on the eastern border of
the Lop desert, under the name of "the singing sands."**

That all these are natural phenomena, no one can doubt. But what
of the questions and answers, plainly and audibly given and received?
What of conversations held between certain travellers and the
invisible spirits, or unknown beings, that sometimes
appear to whole caravans in tangible form? If so many millions
believe in the possibility that spirits may clothe themselves
with material bodies, behind the curtain of a "medium,"
and appear to the circle, why should they reject the
same possibility for the elemental spirits of the deserts? This
is the "to be,

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* There are pious critics who deny the world the same right to
judge the "Bible" on the testimony of deductive logic
as "any other book." Even exact science must bow to
this decree. In the concluding paragraph of an article devoted
to a terrible onslaught on Baron Bunsen's "Chronology,"
which does not quite agree with the "Bible,"
a writer exclaims, "the subject we have proposed to ourselves
is completed. . . . We have endeavored to meet Chevalier Bunsen's
charges against the inspiration of the "Bible" on its
own ground. . . . An inspired book . . . never can, as an expression
of its own teaching, or as a part of its own record, bear witness
to any untrue or ignorant statement of fact, whether in history
or doctrine. If it be untrue in its witness of one, who shall
trust its truth in the witness of the other?"("The
Journal of Sacred Literature and Biblical Record," edited
by the Rev. H. Burgess, Oct., 1859, p. 70.)

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 606 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

or not to be" of Hamlet. If "spirits" can do all
that Spiritualists claim for them, why can they not appear equally
to the traveller in the wildernesses and solitudes? A recent scientific
article in a Russian journal attributes such "spirit-voices,"
in the great Gobi desert, to the echo. Avery
reasonable explanation, if it can only be demonstrated that these
voices simply repeat what has been previously uttered by a living
person. But when the "superstitious" traveller gets
intelligent answers to his questions, this Gobi echo
at once shows a very near relationship with the famous echo
of the Theatre Porte St. Martin at Paris. "How do you do,
sir?" shouts one of the actors in the play. "Very poorly,
my son; thank you. I am getting old, very . . . very old!"
politely answers the echo!

What incredulous merriment must the superstitious and
absurd narratives of Marco Polo, concerning the "supernatural"
gifts of certain shark and wild-beast charmers of India, whom
he terms Abraiaman, have excited for long centuries.
Describing the pearl-fishery of Ceylon, as it was in his time,
he says that the merchants are "obliged also to pay those
men who charm the great fishes — to prevent them from
injuring the divers whilst engaged in seeking pearls under water
— one-twentieth part of all that they take. These fish-charmers
are termed Abraiaman (Brahman?), and their charm holds good for
that day only, for at night they dissolve the charm, so that the
fishes can work mischief at their will. These Abraiaman know also
how to charm beasts and birds, and every living thing."

And this is what we find in the explanatory notes of Colonel Yule,
in relation to this degrading Asiatic "superstition":
"Marco's account of the pearl-fishery is still substantially
correct. . . . At the diamond mines of the northern Circars, Brahmans
are employed in the analogous office of propitiating the tutelary
genii. The shark-charmers are called in Tamil, Kadal-Katti,
'sea-binders,' and in Hindustani, Hai-banda, or'shark-binders.' At Aripo they belong to one family, supposed
to have the monopoly of the charm.* The chief operator is (or
was, not many years ago) paid by the government, and
he also received ten oysters from each boat daily during the fishery.
Tennent, on his visit, found the incumbent of the office to be
a Roman Catholic Christian (?), but that did not seem
to affect the exercise of the validity of his functions. It
is remarkable that not more than one authenticated accident from
sharks had taken place during the whole period of the British
occupation."**

Two items of fact in the above paragraph are worthy of being

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Like the Psylli, or serpent-charmers of Libya, whose
gift is hereditary.

** "Ser Marco Polo," vol. ii., p. 321.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 607 THE SHARK-CHARMERS OF CEYLON.

placed in juxtaposition. 1. The British authorities pay professional
shark-charmers a stipend to exercise their art; and, 2, only one
life has been lost since the execution of the contract. (We
have yet to learn whether the loss of this one life did
not occur under the Roman Catholic sorcerer.) Is it pretended
that the salary is paid as a concession to a degrading native
superstition? Very well; but how about the sharks? Are they receiving
salaries, also, from the British authorities out of the Secret
Service Fund? Every person who has visited Ceylon must know that
the waters of the pearl coast swarm with sharks of the most voracious
kind, and that it is even dangerous to bathe, let alone to dive
for oysters. We might go further, if we chose, and give the names
of British officials of the highest rank in the Indian service,
who, after resorting to native "magicians" and "sorcerers,"
to assist them in recovering things lost, or in unravelling vexatious
mysteries of one kind or another, and being successful, and at
the time secretly expressing their gratitude, have gone
away, and shown their innate cowardice before the world's Areopagus,
by publicly denying the truth of magic, and leading the jest against
Hindu "superstition."

Not many years ago, one of the worst of superstitions scientists
held to be that of believing that the murderer's portrait remained
impressed on the eye of the murdered person, and that the former
could be easily recognized by examining carefully the retina.
The "superstition" asserted that the likeness could
be made still more striking by subjecting the murdered man to
certain old women's fumigations, and the like gossip. And now
an American newspaper, of March 26, 1877, says: "A number
of years ago attention was attracted to a theory which insisted
that the last effort of vision materialized itself and remained
as an object imprinted on the retina of the eye after death. This
has been proved a fact by an experiment tried in the presence
of Dr. Gamgee, F. R. S., of Birmingham, England, and Prof. Bunsen,
the subject being a living rabbit. The means taken to prove the
merits of the question were most simple, the eyes being placed
near an opening in a shutter, and retaining the shape of the same
after the animal had been deprived of life."

If, from the regions of idolatry, ignorance, and superstition,
as India is termed by some missionaries, we turn to the so-called
centre of civilization — Paris, we find the same principles of
magic exemplified there under the name of occult Spiritualism.
The Honorable John L. O'Sullivan, Ex-Minister Plenipotentiary
of the United States to Portugal, has kindly furnished us with
the strange particulars of a semi-magical seance which he recently
attended with several other eminent men, at Paris. Having his
permission to that effect, we print his letter in full.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 608 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

"NEW YORK, Feb. 7, 1877.

"I cheerfully obey your request for a written statement of
what I related to you orally, as having been witnessed by me in
Paris, last summer, at the house of a highly respectable physician,
whose name I have no authority to use, but whom, after the usual
French fashion of anonymizing, I will call Dr. X.

"I was introduced there by an English friend, well-known
in the Spiritualist circles in London — Mr. Gledstanes. Some
eight or ten other visitors were present, of both sexes. We were
seated in fauteuils, occupying half of a long drawing-room,
flush with a spacious garden. In the other half of the room was
a grand piano, a considerable open space between it and us, and
a couple of fauteuils in that space, evidently placed
there to be occupied by other sitters. A door near them opened
into the private apartments.

"Dr. X. came in, and discoursed to us for about twenty minutes
with rapid and vehement French eloquence, which I could not undertake
to report. He had, for over twenty-five years, investigated occult
mysteries, of which he was about to exhibit some phenomena. His
object was to attract his brethren of the scientific world, but
few or none of them came to see for themselves. He intended before
long to publish a book. He presently led in two ladies, the younger
one his wife, the other (whom I will call Madame Y.) a medium
or sensitive, with whom he had worked through all that period
in the prosecution of these studies, and who had devoted and sacrificed
her whole life to this work with him. Both these ladies had their
eyes closed, apparently in trance.

"He stood them at the opposite ends of the long grand piano
(which was shut), and directed them to put their hands upon it.
Sounds soon began to issue from its chords, marching, galloping,
drums, trumpets, rolling musketry, cannon, cries, and groans —
in one word, a battle. This lasted, I should say, some
five to ten minutes.

"I should have mentioned that before the two mediums were
brought in I had written in pencil, on a small bit of paper (by
direction of Mr. Gledstanes, who had been there before), the names
of three objects, to be known to myself alone, viz., some musical
composer, deceased, a flower, and a cake. I
chose Beethoven, a Marguerite (daisy), and a
kind of French cake called plombieres, and rolled the
paper into a pellet, which I kept in my hand, without letting
even my friend know its contents.

"When the battle was over, he placed Mme. Y. in one of the
two fauteuils, Mme. X. being seated apart at one side
of the room, and I was asked to hand my folded, or rolled, paper
to Mme. Y. She held it (unopened) between her fingers, on her
lap. She was dressed in white merino, flowing from her neck and
gathered in at the waist, under a blaze of light from chandeliers
on the right and left. After a while she dropped the little roll
of paper to the floor, and I picked it up. Dr. X. then raised
her to her feet and told her to make "the evocation of the
dead." He withdrew the fauteuils and placed in her
hand a steel rod of about four and half or five feet in length,
the top of which was surmounted with a short cross-piece — the
Egyptian Tau. With this she traced a circle round herself,
as she stood, of about six feet in diameter. She did not hold
the cross-piece as a handle, but, on the contrary, she held the
rod at the opposite end. She presently handed it back to Dr. X.
There she stood for some time, her hands hanging down and folded
together in front of her, motionless, and with her eyes directed
slightly upward toward one of the opposite corners of the long
salon. Her lips presently began to move, with muttered
sounds, which after a while became distinct in articulation, in
short broken sentences or phrases, very much like the recitation
of a litany. Cer-

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 609 A MAGICAL SOIREE IN PARIS.

tain words, seeming to be names, would recur from time to time.
It sounded to me somewhat as I have heard Oriental languages sound.
Her face was very earnest and mobile with expression, with sometimes
a slight frown on the brow. I suppose it lasted about fifteen
or twenty minutes, amidst the motionless silence of all the company,
as we gazed on the weird scene. Her utterance finally seemed to
increase in vehemence and rapidity. At last she stretched forth
one arm toward the space on which her eyes had been fixed, and,
with a loud cry, almost a scream, she exclaimed: 'BEETHOVEN!'
— and fell backward, prostrate on the floor.

"Dr. X. hastened to her, made eager magnetic passes about
her face and neck, and propped up her head and shoulders on cushions.
And there she lay like a person sick and suffering, occasionally
moaning, turning restlessly, etc. I suppose a full half-hour then
elapsed, during which she seemed to pass through all the phases
of gradual death (this I was told was a re-enacting of
the death of Beethoven). It would be long to describe in detail,
even if I could recall all. We watched as though assisting at
a scene of real death. I will only say that her pulse ceased;
no beating of the heart could be perceived; her hands first, then
her arms became cold, while warmth was still to be felt under
her arm-pits; even they at last became entirely cold; her feet
and legs became cold in the same manner, and they swelled astonishingly.
The doctor invited us all to come and recognize these phenomena.
The gasping breaths came at longer and longer intervals, and feebler
and feebler. At last came the end; her head fell sidewise, her
hands, which had been picking with the fingers about her dress,
collapsed also. The doctor said, 'she is now dead'; and so it
indeed seemed. In vehement haste he produced (I did not see from
where) two small snakes, which he seemed to huddle about
her neck and down into her bosom, making also eager transverse
passes about her head and neck. After a while she appeared to
revive slowly, and finally the doctor and a couple of men servants
lifted her up and carried her off into the private apartments,
from which he soon returned. He told us that this was all very
critical, but perfectly safe, but that no time was to be lost,
for otherwise the death, which he said was real, would be permanent.

"I need not say how ghastly the effect of this whole scene
had been on all the spectators. Nor need I remind you that this
was no trickery of a performer paid to astonish. The scene passed
in the elegant drawing-room of a respectable physician, to which
access without introduction is impossible, while (outside of the
phenomenal facts) a thousand indescribable details of language,
manner, expression, and action presented those minute guarantees
of sincerity and earnestness which carry conviction to those who
witness, though it may be transmitted to those who only hear or
read of them.

"After a time Mme. Y. returned and was seated in one of the
two fauteuils before mentioned, and I was invited to
the other by her side. I had still in my hand the unopened pellet
of paper containing the three words privately written by me, of
which (Beethoven) had been the first. She sat for a few minutes
with her open hands resting on her lap. They presently began to
move restlessly about. "Ah, it burns, it burns," she
said, and her features contracted with an expression of pain.
In a few moments she raised one of them, and it contained a marguerite,
the flower I had written as my second word. I received it from
her, and after it had been examined by the rest of the company,
I preserved it. Dr. X. said it was of a species not known in that
part of the country; an opinion in which he was certainly mistaken,
as a few days afterwards I saw the same in the flower-market of
the Madeleine. Whether this flower was produced under
her hands, or was simply an apport, as in the phenomenon
we are familiar with in the experiences of Spiritualism, I do
not know. It was the one or the other, for she certainly did not
have it as she sat there by my side, under a strong light, before
it

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 610 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

made its appearance. The flower was perfectly fresh in every one
of its delicate petals.

"The third word I had written on my bit of paper was the
name of a cake — plombieres. She presently began to
go through the motions of eating, though no cake was visible,
and asked me if I would not go with her to Plombieres — the
name of the cake I had written. This might have been simply a
case of mind-reading.

"After this followed a scene in which Madame X., the doctor's
wife, was said, and seemed to be, possessed by the spirit of Beethoven.
The doctor addressed her as "Monsieur Beethoven." She
took no notice until he called the name aloud in her ear. She
then responded with polite bows, etc. (You may remember that Beethoven
was extremely deaf.) After some conversation he begged her to
play, and she seated herself at the piano and performed magnificently
both some of his known music and some improvisations which were
generally recognized by the company as in his style. I was told
afterwards, by a lady friend of Madame X., that in her normal
state she was a very ordinary amateur performer. After about half
an hour spent in music and in dialogue in the character of Beethoven,
to whom her face in expression, and her tumbled hair, seemed to
acquire a strange resemblance, the doctor placed in her hands
a sheet of paper and a crayon, and asked her to sketch the face
of the person she saw before her. She produced very rapidly a
profile sketch of a head and face resembling Beethoven's busts,
though as a younger man; and she dashed off a rapid name under
it, as though a signature, 'Beethoven.' I have preserved the sketch,
though how the handwriting may correspond with Beethoven's signature
I cannot say.

"The hour was now late, and the company broke up; nor had
I any time to interrogate Dr. X. upon what we had thus witnessed.
But I called on him with Mr. Gledstanes a few evenings afterwards.
I found that he admitted the action of spirits, and was a Spiritualist,
but also a great deal more, having studied long and deeply into
the occult mysteries of the Orient. So I understood him to convey,
while he seemed to prefer to refer me to his book, which he would
probably publish in the course of the present year. I observed
a number of loose sheets on a table all covered with Oriental
characters unknown to me — the work of Madame Y. in trance, as
he said, in answer to an inquiry. He told us that in the scene
I had witnessed, she became (i.e., as I presumed, was
possessed by) a priestess of one of the ancient Egyptian temples,
and that the origin of it was this: A scientific friend of
his had acquired in Egypt possession of the mummy of a priestess,
and had given him some of the linen swathings with which the body
was enveloped, and from the contact with this cloth of 2,000 or
3,000 years old, the devotion of her whole existence to this occult
relation, and twenty years seclusion from the world, his medium,
as sensitive Madame Y., had become what I had seen. The language
I had heard her speak was the sacred language of the temples in
which she had been instructed, not so much by inspiration but
very much as we now study languages, by dictation, written exercises,
etc., being even chided and punished when she was dull or slow.
He said that Jacolliot had heard her in a similar scene, and recognized
sounds and words of the very oldest sacred language as preserved
in the temples of India, anterior, if I remember right, to the
epoch of the Sanscrit.

"Respecting the snakes he had employed in the hasty
operation of restoring her to life, or rather perhaps arresting
the last consummation of the process of death, he said there was
a strange mystery in their relation to the phenomena of life and
death. I understood that they were indispensable. Silence and
inaction on our part were also insisted upon throughout, and any
attempt at questioning him at the time was peremptorily, almost
angrily, suppressed. We might come and talk afterward, or wait
for the appearance of his book, but he alone seemed entitled to
exercise the faculty of

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 611 BEETHOVEN'S SPIRIT RE-INCARNATE.

speech throughout all these performances — which he certainly
did with great volubility, the while, with all the eloquence and
precision of diction of a Frenchman, combining scientific culture
with vividness of imagination.

"I intended to return on some subsequent evening, but learned
from Mr. Gledstanes that he had given them up for the present,
disgusted with his ill-success in getting his professional colleagues
and men of science to come and witness what it was his object
to show them.

"This is about as much as I can recall of this strange, weird
evening, excepting some uninteresting details. I have given you
the name and address of Dr. X. confidentially, because he would
seem to have gone more or less far on the same path as you pursue
in the studies of your Theosophical Society. Beyond that I feel
bound to keep it private, not having his authority to use it in
any way which might lead to publicity.

In this interesting case simple Spiritualism has transcended its
routine and encroached upon the limits of magic. The features
of mediumship are there, in the double life led by the sensitive
Madame Y., in which she passes an existence totally distinct from
the normal one, and by reason of the subordination of her individuality
to a foreign will, becomes the permutation of a priestess of Egypt;
and in the personation of the spirit of Beethoven, and in the
unconscious and cataleptic state into which she falls. On the
other hand, the will-power exercised by Dr. X. upon his sensitive,
the tracing of the mystic circle, the evocations, the materialization
of the desired flower, the seclusion and education of Madame Y.,
the employment of the wand and its form, the creation and use
of the serpents, the evident control of the astral forces — all
these pertain to magic. Such experiments are of interest and value
to science, but liable to abuse in the hands of a less conscientious
practitioner than the eminent gentleman designated as Dr. X. A
true Oriental kabalist would not recommend their duplication.

Spheres unknown below our feet; spheres still more unknown and
still more unexplored above us; between the two a handful of moles,
blind to God's great light, and deaf to the whispers of the invisible
world, boasting that they lead mankind. Where? Onward, they claim;
but we have a right to doubt it. The greatest of our physiologists,
when placed side by side with a Hindu fakir, who knows neither
how to read nor write, will very soon find himself feeling as
foolish as a school-boy who has neglected to learn his lesson.
It is not by vivisecting living animals that a physiologist will
assure himself of the existence of man's soul, nor on the blade
of the knife can he extract it from a human body. "What sane
man," inquires Sergeant Cox, the President of the London
Psychological Society, "what sane man who knows nothing of
magnetism or physiology, who had never witnessed an experiment
nor learned its

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 612 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

principles, would proclaim himself a fool by denying
its facts and denouncing its theory?" The truthful answer
to this would be, "two-thirds of our modern-day scientists."
The impertinence, if truth can ever be impertinent, must be laid
at the door of him who uttered it — a scientist of the number
of those few who are brave and honest enough to utter wholesome
truths, however disagreeable. And there is no mistaking the real
meaning of the imputation, for immediately after the irreverent
inquiry, the learned lecturer remarks as pointedly: "The
chemist takes his electricity from the electrician, the physiologist
looks to the geologist for his geology — each would deem it an
impertinence in the other if he were to pronounce judgment in
the branch of knowledge not his own. Strange it is, but true as
strange, that this rational rule is wholly set at naught in the
treatment of psychology. Physical scientists deem themselves
competent to pronounce a dogmatic judgment upon psychology and
all that appertains to it, without having witnessed any of its
phenomena, and in entire ignorance of its principles and practice."

We sincerely hope that the two eminent biologists, Mr. Mendeleyeff,
of St. Petersburg, and Mr. Ray Lankester, of London fame, will
bear themselves under the above as unflinchingly as their living
victims do when palpitating under their dissecting knives.

For a belief to have become universal, it must have been founded
on an immense accumulation of facts, tending to strengthen it,
from one generation to another. At the head of all such beliefs
stands magic, or, if one would prefer — occult psychology. Who,
of those who appreciate its tremendous powers even from its feeble,
half-paralyzed effects in our civilized countries, would dare
disbelieve in our days the assertions of Porphyry and Proclus,
that even inanimate objects, such as statues of gods, could be
made to move and exhibit a factitious life for a few moments?
Who can deny the allegation? Is it those who testify daily over
their own signatures that they have seen tables and chairs move
and walk, and pencils write, without contact? Diogenes Laertius
tells us of a certain philosopher, Stilpo, who was exiled from
Athens by the Areopagus, for having dared to deny publicly that
the Minerva of Pheidias was anything else than a block of marble.
But our own age, after having mimicked the ancients in everything
possible, even to their very names, such as "senates,"
"prefects," and "consuls," etc.; and after
admitting that Napoleon the Great conquered three-fourths of Europe
by applying the principles of war taught by the Caesars and the
Alexanders, knows so much better than its preceptors about psychology,
that it would vote every believer in "animated tables"
into Bedlam.

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* "The Spiritualist," London, Nov. 10, 1876.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 613 LIQUEFACTION OF BLOOD AT NAPLES AND NARGERCOM.

Be this as it may, the religion of the ancients is the religion
of the future. A few centuries more, and there will linger
no sectarian beliefs in either of the great religions of humanity.
Brahmanism and Buddhism, Christianity and Mahometanism will all
disappear before the mighty rush of facts. "Iwill pour out my spirit upon all flesh," writes the
prophet Joel. "Verily I say unto you . . . greater works
than these shall you do," promises Jesus. But this can only
come to pass when the world returns to the grand religion of the
past; the knowledge of those majestic systems which preceded,
by far, Brahmanism, and even the primitive monotheism of the ancient
Chaldeans. Meanwhile, we must remember the direct effects of the
revealed mystery. The only means by which the wise priests of
old could impress upon the grosser senses of the multitudes the
idea of the Omnipotency of the Creative will or FIRST
CAUSE; namely, the divine animation of inert
matter, the soul infused into it by the potential will of man,
the microcosmic image of the great Architect, and the transportation
of ponderous objects through space and material obstacles.

Why should the pious Roman Catholic turn away in disgust at the
"heathen" practices of the Hindu Tamil, for instance?
We have witnessed the miracle of San Gennaro, in good old Naples,
and we have seen the same in Nargercoil, in India. Where is the
difference? The coagulated blood of the Catholic saint is made
to boil and fume in its crystal bottle, to the gratification of
the lazzaroni; and from its jewelled shrine the martyr's idol
beams radiant smiles and blessings at the Christian congregation.
On the other hand, a ball of clay filled with water, is stuffed
into the open breast of the god Suran; and while the padre shakes
his bottle and produces his "miracle" of blood,
the Hindu priest plunges an arrow into the god's breast, and produces
his "miracle," for the blood gushes forth in
streams, and the water is changed into blood. Both Christians
and Hindus fall in raptures at the sight of such a miracle. So
far, we do not see the slightest difference. But can it be that
the Pagan learned the trick from San Gennaro?

"Know, O, Asclepius," says Hermes, "that as the
HIGHEST ONE is the father of the celestial gods,
so is man the artisan of the gods who reside in the temples,
and who delight in the society of mortals. Faithful to its
origin and nature, humanity perseveres in this imitation of the
divine powers; and, if the Father Creator has made in His image
the eternal gods, mankind in its turn makes its gods
in its own image." "And, dost thou speak of statues
of gods; O, Trismegistus?" "Verily, I do, Asclepius,
and however great thy defiance, perceivest thou not that these
statues are endowed with reason, that they are animated
with a soul, and that they can operate the greatest prodigies.
How can we reject the

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 614 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

evidence, when we find these gods possessing the gift of predicting
the future, which they are compelled to tell, when forced to it
by magic spells, as through the lips of the divines and their
visions? . . . It is the marvel of marvels that man could have
invented and created gods. . . . True, the faith of our ancestors
has erred, and in their pride they fell into error as to the precise
essence of these gods . . . but they have still found out that
art themselves. Powerless to create soul and spirit, they evoke
the souls of angels and demons in order to introduce them into
the consecrated statues; and so make them preside at their Mysteries,
by communicating to idols their own faculty to do good as
well as evil."

It is not antiquity alone which is full of evidence that the statues
and idols of the gods at times exhibited intelligence and locomotive
powers. Full in the nineteenth century, we see the papers recording
the capers played by the statue of the Madonna of Lourdes. This
gracious lady, the French Notre Dame, runs away several times
to the woods adjoining her usual residence, the parish church.
The sexton is obliged to hunt after the runaway, and bring her
home more than once.* After this begins a series of "miracles,"
healing, prophesying, letter-dropping from on high, and what not.
These "miracles" are implicitly accepted by millions
and millions of Roman Catholics; numbers of these belonging to
the most intelligent and educated classes. Why, then, should we
disbelieve in testimony of precisely the same character, given
as to contemporary phenomena of the same kind, by the most accredited
and esteemed historians — by Titus Livy, for instance? "Juno,
would you please abandon the walls of Veii, and change this abode
for that of Rome?" inquires of the goddess a Roman soldier,
after the conquest of that city. Juno consents, and nodding her
head in token of acquiescence, her statue answers: "Yes,
I will." Furthermore, upon their carrying off the figure,
it seems to instantly "lose its immense weight,"adds the historian, and the statue seems rather to follow
them than otherwise.**

With naivete, and a faith bordering on the sublime, des
Mousseaux, bravely rushes into the dangerous parallels, and gives
a number of instances of Christian as well as "heathen"
miracles of that kind. He prints a list of such walking
statues of saints and Madonnas, who lose their weight, and move
about as so many living men and women; and presents unimpeachable
evidence of the same, from classical authors, who described their
miracles.***He has but one thought, one anxious
and all-overpowering desire — to prove to his readers that magic
does exist,

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 615 THE AWFUL SCIENCE OF THEOPOEA.

and that Christianity beats it flat. Not that the miracles of
the latter are either more numerous, or more extraordinary, or
suggestive than those of the Pagans. Not at all; and he is a fair
historian as to facts and evidence. But, it is his arguments and
reflections that are priceless: one kind of miracle is produced
by God, the other by the Devil; he drags down the Deity and placing
Him face to face with Satan, allows the arch-enemy to beat the
Creator by long odds. Not a word of solid, evident proof to show
the substantial difference between the two kinds of wonders.

Would we inquire the reason why he traces in one the hand of God
and in the other the horn and hoof of the Devil? Listen to the
answer: "The Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolical Church declares
the miracles wrought by her faithful sons produced by the will
of God; and all others the work of the spirits of Hell."
Very well, but on what ground? We are shown an endless list of
holy writers; of saints who fought during their whole lives with
the fiends; and of fathers whose word and authority are accepted
as "word of God" by the same Church. "Your idols,
your consecrated statues are the abode of demons,"exclaims St. Cyprian. "Yes, it is these spirits
who inspire your divines, who animate the bowels of your
victims, who govern the flight of birds, and who, mixing incessantly
falsehood with truth, render oracles, and . . . operate prodigies,
their object being to bring you invincibly to their worship."*

Fanaticism in religion, fanaticism in science, or fanaticism in
any other question becomes a hobby, and cannot but blind our senses.
It will ever be useless to argue with a fanatic. And here we cannot
help admiring once more the profound knowledge of human nature
which dictated to Mr. Sergeant Cox the following words, delivered
in the same address as before alluded to: "There is no more
fatal fallacy than that the truth will prevail by its own force,
that it has only to be seen to be embraced. In fact the desire
for the actual truth exists in very few minds, and the capacity
to discern it in fewer still. When men say that they are seeking
the truth, they mean that they are looking for evidence to support
some prejudice or prepossession. Their beliefs are moulded to
their wishes. They see all, and more than all, that seems to tell
for that which they desire; they are blind as bats to whatever
tells against them. The scientists are no more exempt from this
common failing than are others."

We know that from the remotest ages there has existed a mysterious,
awful science, under the name of theopoea. This science
taught the art of endowing the various symbols of gods with temporary
life and intelli-

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* "De Idol. Vanit.," lib. I., p. 452.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 616 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

gence. Statues and blocks of inert matter became animated under
the potential will of the hierophant. The fire stolen by Prometheus
had fallen down in the struggle to earth; it embraced the lower
regions of the sky, and settled in the waves of the universal
ether as the potential Akasa of the Hindu rites. We breathe
and imbibe it into our organic system with every mouthful of fresh
air. Our organism is full of it from the instant of our birth.
But it becomes potential only under the influx of WILL and SPIRIT.

Left to itself, this life-principle will blindly follow the laws
of nature; and, according to conditions, will produce health and
an exuberance of life, or cause death and dissolution.
But, guided by the will of the adept, it becomes obedient; its
currents restore the equilibrium in organic bodies, they fill
the waste, and produce physical and psychological miracles, well-known
to mesmerizers. Infused in inorganic and inert matter, they create
an appearance of life, hence motion. If to that life an individual
intelligence, a personality, is wanting, then the operator must
either send his scin-lecca, his own astral spirit, to
animate it; or use his power over the region of nature-spirits
to force one of them to infuse his entity into the marble,
wood, or metal; or, again, be helped by human spirits. But the
latter — except the vicious, earth-bound class* — will not
infuse their essence into these inanimate objects. They leave
the lower kinds to produce the similitude of life and animation,
and only send their influence through the intervening spheres
like a ray of divine light, when the so-called "miracle"
is required for a good purpose. The condition — and this is a
law in spiritual nature — is purity of motive, purity of the
surrounding magnetic atmosphere, personal purity of the operator.
Thus is it, that a Pagan "miracle" may be by far holier
than a Christian one.

Who that has seen the performance of the fakirs of Southern India,
can doubt the existence of theopoea in ancient times?
An inveterate skeptic, though more than anxious to attribute every
phenomenon to jugglery, still finds himself compelled to testify
to facts; and facts that are to be witnessed daily if one chooses.
"I dare not," he says, speaking of Chibh-Chondor, a
fakir of Jaffna-patnam, "describe all the exercises which
he performed. There are things one dares not say even

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* These, after their bodily death, unable to soar higher, attached
to terrestrial regions, delight in the society of the kind of
elementals which by their affinity with vice attract them the
most. They identify themselves with these to such a degree that
they very soon lose sight of their own identity, and become a
part of the elementals, the help of which they need to communicate
with mortals. But as the nature-spirits are not immortal,
so the human elementaries who have lost their divine guide —
spirit — can last no longer than the essence of the elements
which compose their astral bodies holds together.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 617 POPE SIXTUS V. ON TALISMANS.

after having witnessed them, for fear of being charged with having
been under an inexplicable hallucination! And yet, ten, nay, twenty
times, I saw and saw again the fakir obtain similar results over
inert matter. . . . It was but child's play for our 'charmer'
to make the flame of candles which had, by his directions, been
placed in the remotest corners of the apartment, pale and become
extinguished at will; to cause the furniture to move, even the
sofas on which we sat, the doors to open and shut repeatedly:
and all this without quitting the mat upon which he sat on the
floor.

"Perhaps I will be told that I saw imperfectly. Possibly;
but I will say that hundreds and thousands of persons have seen
and do see what I have, and things more wonderful; has one of
all these discovered the secret, or been able to duplicate these
phenomena? And I can never repeat too often that all this does
not occur on a stage, supplied with mechanical contrivances for
the use of the operator. No, it is a beggar crouched, naked, on
the floor, who thus sports with your intelligence, your senses,
and all that which we have agreed among ourselves to style the
immutable laws of nature, but which he appears to alter at will!

"Does he change its course? 'No, but he makes it act by using
forces which are yet unknown to us,' say the believers. However
that may be, I have found myself twenty times at similar performances
in company with the most distinguished men of British India —
professors, physicians, officers. Not one of them but thus summarized
his impressions upon quitting the drawing-room. 'This is something
terrifying to human intelligence!' Every time that I saw repeated
by a fakir the experiment of reducing serpents to a cataleptic
state, a condition in which these animals have all the rigidity
of the dry branch of a tree, my thoughts have reverted to the
biblical fable (?) which endows Moses and the priests of Pharaoh
with the like power."*

Assuredly, the flesh of man, beast, and bird should be as easily
endowed with magnetic life-principle as the inert table of a modern
medium. Either both wonders are possible and true, or both must
fall to the ground, together with the miracles of Apostolic days,
and those of the more modern Popish Church. As for vital proofs
furnished to us in favor of such possibilities, we might name
books enough to fill a whole library. If Sixtus V. cited a formidable
array of spirits attached to various talismans, was not his threat
of excommunication for all those who practiced the art, uttered
merely because he would have the knowledge of this secret confined
within the precincts of the Church? How would it do for his "divine"
miracles to be studied and successfully reproduced by

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* L. Jacolliot: "Voyage au Pays des Perles."

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 618 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

every man endowed with perseverance, a strong positive magnetic
power, and an unflinching will? Recent events at Lourdes (of course,
supposing them to have been truthfully reported) prove that the
secret is not wholly lost; and if there is no strong magician-mesmerizer
concealed under frock and surplice, then the statue of Notre-Dame
is moved by the same forces which move every magnetized table
at a spiritual seance; and the nature of these "intelligences,"
whether they belong to the classes of human, human elementary,
or elemental spirits depends on a variety of conditions. With
one who knows anything of mesmerism, and at the same time of the
charitable spirit of the Roman Catholic Church, it ought not to
be difficult to comprehend that the incessant curses of the priests
and monks; and the bitter anathemas so freely pronounced by Pius
IX. — himself a strong mesmerizer, and believed
to be a jettatore (evil eye) — have drawn together legions
of elementaries and elementals under the leadership of the disembodied
Torquemadas. These are the "angels" who play pranks
with the statue of the Queen of Heaven. Any one who accepts the
"miracle" and thinks otherwise blasphemes.

Although it would seem as if we had already furnished sufficient
proofs that modern science has little or no reason to boast of
originality, yet before closing this volume we will adduce a few
more to place the matter beyond doubt. We have but to recapitulate,
as briefly as possible, the several claims to new philosophies
and discoveries, the announcement of which has made the world
open its eyes so wide within these last two centuries. We have
pointed to the achievements in arts, sciences, and philosophy
of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Chaldeans, and Assyrians; we
will now quote from an author who has passed long years in India
studying their philosophy. In the famous and recent work of Christna
et le Christ, we find the following tabulation:

"Philosophy. — The ancient Hindus have created
from the foundation the two systems of spiritualism and materialism,
of metaphysical philosophy and of positive philosophy. The first
taught in the Vedantic school, whose founder was Vyasa; the second
taught in the Sankya school, whose founder was Kapila.

"Astronomical Science. — They fixed the calendar,
invented the zodiac, calculated the precession of the equinoxes,
discovered the general laws of the movements, observed and predicted
the eclipses.

"Mathematics. — They invented the decimal system,
algebra, the differential, integral, and infinitesimal calculi.
They also discovered geometry and trigonometry, and in these two
sciences they constructed and proved theorems which were only
discovered in Europe as late as the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. It was the Brahmans in fact who first deduced
the superficial measure of a triangle from the calculation of
its three

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 619 THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF OLD INDIA.

sides, and calculated the relations of the circumference to the
diameter. Furthermore, we must restore to them the square of the
hypotenuse and the table so improperly called Pythagorean, which
we find engraved on the goparama of the majority of great
pagodas.

"Physics. — They established the principle which
is still our own to-day, that the universe is a harmonious whole,
subject to laws which may be determined by observation and experiment.
They discovered hydrostatics; and the famous proposition that
every body plunged in water loses of its own weight a weight equal
to the volume which it displaces, is only a loan made by the Brahmans
to the famous Greek architect, Archimedes. The physicists of the
pagodas calculated the velocity of light, fixed in a positive
manner the laws which it follows in its reflection. And finally,
it is beyond doubt, from the calculations of Surya-Sidhenta, that
they knew and calculated the force of steam.

"Chemistry. — They knew the composition of water,
and formulated for gases the famous law, which we know only
from yesterday, that the volumes of gas are in inverse ratio to
the pressures that they support. They knew how to prepare
sulphuric, nitric, and muriatic acids; the oxides of copper, iron,
lead, tin, and zinc; the sulphurets of iron, copper, mercury,
antimony, and arsenic; the sulphates of zinc and iron; the carbonates
of iron, lead, and soda; nitrate of silver; and powder.

"Medicine. — Their knowledge was truly astonishing.
In Tcharaka and Sousruta, the two princes of Hindu medicine, is
laid down the system which Hippocrates appropriated later. Sousruta
notably enunciates the principles of preventive medicine or hygiene,
which he places much above curative medicine — too often, according
to him, empyrical. Are we more advanced to-day? It is not without
interest to remark that the Arab physicians, who enjoyed a merited
celebrity in the middle ages — Averroes among others — constantly
spoke of the Hindu physicians, and regarded them as the initiators
of the Greeks and themselves.

"Pharmacology. — They knew all the simples, their
properties, their use, and upon this point have not yet ceased
to give lessons to Europe. Quite recently we have received from
them the treatment of asthma, with the datura.

"Surgery. — In this they are not less remarkable.
They made the operation for the stone, succeeded admirably in
the operation for cataract, and the extraction of the foetus,
of which all the unusual or dangerous cases are described by Tcharaka
with an extraordinary scientific accuracy.

"Grammar. — They formed the most marvellous language
in the world — the Sanscrit — which gave birth to the greater
part of the idioms of the Orient, and of Indo-European countries.

"Poetry. — They have treated all the styles, and
shown themselves

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 620 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

supreme masters in all. Sakuntala, Avrita, the Hindu Phaedra,
Saranga, and a thousand other dramas have their superiors neither
in Sophocles nor Euripides, in Corneille nor Shakespere. Their
descriptive poetry has never been equalled. One must read, in
the Megadata, "The Plaint of an Exile," who
implores a passing cloud to carry his remembrances to his cottage,
his relatives and friends, whom he will never see more, to form
an idea of the splendor to which this style has been carried in
India. Their fables have been copied by all modern and ancient
peoples, who have not even given themselves the trouble to color
differently the subject of these little dramas.

"Music. — They invented the gamut with its differences
of tones and half-tones much before Gui d'Arezzo. Here is the
Hindu scale:

Sa--Ri--Ga--Ma--Pa--Da--Ni--Sa.

"Architecture. — They seem to have exhausted all
that the genius of man is capable of conceiving. Domes, inexpressibly
bold; tapering cupolas; minarets, with marble lace; Gothic towers;
Greek hemicycles; polychrome style — all kinds and all epochs
are there, betokening the origin and date of the different colonies,
which, in emigrating, carried with them their souvenirs of their
native art."

Such were the results attained by this ancient and imposing Brahmanical
civilization. What have we to offer for comparison? Beside such
majestic achievements of the past, what can we place that will
seem so grandiose and sublime as to warrant our boast of superiority
over an ignorant ancestry? Beside the discoverers of geometry
and algebra, the constructors of human speech, the parents of
philosophy, the primal expounders of religion, the adepts in psychological
and physical science, how even the greatest of our biologists
and theologians seem dwarfed! Name to us any modern discovery,
and we venture to say, that Indian history need not long be searched
before the prototype will be found of record. Here we are with
the transit of science half accomplished, and all our ideas in
process of readjustment to the theories of force-correlation,
natural selection, atomic polarity, and evolution. And here, to
mock our conceit, our apprehensions, and our despair, we may read
what Manu said, perhaps 10,000 years before the birth of Christ:

"The first germ of life was developed by water and heat"
(Manu, book i., sloka 8).

"Water ascends toward the sky in vapors; from the sun it
descends in rain, from the rain are born the plants, and from
the plants, animals" (book iii., sloka 76).

"Each being acquires the qualities of the one which immediately
precedes it, in such a manner that the farther a being gets away
from the

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 621 LITTRE'S POSITIVISM 11,000 YEARS OLD.

primal atom of its series, the more he is possessed of qualities
and perfections" (book i., sloka 20).

"Man will traverse the universe, gradually ascending, and
passing through the rocks, the plants, the worms, insects, fish,
serpents, tortoises, wild animals, cattle, and higher animals.
. . . Such is the inferior degree"(Ibid.).

"These are the transformations declared, from the plant up
to Brahma, which have to take place in his world" (Ibid.).

"The Greek," says Jacolliot, "is but the Sanscrit.
Pheidias and Praxiteles have studied in Asia the chefs-d'oeuvre
of Daonthia, Ramana, and Aryavosta. Plato disappears before Dgeminy
and Veda-Vyasa, whom he literally copies. Aristotle is thrown
into the shade by the Pourva-Mimansa and the Outtara-Mimansa,
in which one finds all the systems of philosophy which we
are now occupied in re-editing, from the Spiritualism of Socrates
and his school, the skepticism of Pyrrho, Montaigne, and Kant,
down to the positivism of Littre."

Let those who doubt the exactness of the latter assertion read
this phrase, extracted textually from the Outtara-Mimansa,
or Vedanta, of Vyasa, who lived at an epoch which
the Brahmanical chronology fixes at 10,400 years before our era:

"We can only study phenomena, verify them, and hold them
to be relatively true, but nothing in the universe, neither by
perception nor by induction, nor by the senses, nor by reasoning,
being able to demonstrate the existence of a Supreme Cause, which
could, at a fixed point of time, have given birth to the universe,
Science has to discuss neither the possibility nor impossibility
of this Supreme Cause."

Thus, gradually but surely, will the whole of antiquity be vindicated.
Truth will be carefully sifted from exaggeration; much that is
now considered fiction may yet be proved fact, and the "facts
and laws" of modern science found to belong to the limbo
of exploded myths. When, centuries before our era, the Hindu Bramaheupto
affirmed that the starry sphere was immovable, and that the daily
rising and setting of stars confirms the motion of the earth upon
its axis; and when Aristarchus of Samos, born 267 years B.C.,
and the Pythagorean philosopher Nicete, the Syracusan, maintained
the same, what was the credit given to their theories until the
days of Copernicus and Galileo? And the system of these two princes
of science — a system which has revolutionized the whole world
— how long will it be allowed to remain as a complete and undisturbed
whole? Have we not, at the present moment, in Germany, a learned
savant, a Professor Schoepfer, who, in his public lectures at
Berlin, tries to demonstrate, 1, that the earth is immovable;
2, the sun is but a little bigger than it seems; and 3, that Tycho-Brahe
was perfectly right

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 622 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

and Galileo perfectly wrong?* And what was Tycho-Brahe's theory?
Why, that the earth stands immovable in the centre of the universe,
and that around it, as around its centre, the whole of the celestial
vault gravitates every twenty-four hours; and finally, that the
sun and moon, apart from this motion, proceed on curved lines
peculiar to themselves, while Mercury, with the rest of the planets,
describes an epicycloid.

We certainly have no intention to lose time nor devote space to
either combating or supporting this new theory, which
suspiciously resembles the old ones of Aristotle and
even the Venerable Bede. We will leave the learned army of modern
Academicians to "wash their family linen among themselves,"
to use an expression of the great Napoleon. But we will, nevertheless,
avail ourselves of such a good opportunity as this defection affords
to demand once more of science her diploma or patents of infallibility.
Alas! are these, then, the results of her boasted progress?

It was hardly more than yesterday when, upon the strength of facts
within our own observation, and corroborated by the testimony
of a multitude of witnesses, we timidly ventured the assertion
that tables, mediums, and Hindu fakirs were occasionally levitated.
And when we added that, if such a phenomenon should happen but
once in a century, "without a visible mechanical cause, then
that rising is a manifestation of a natural law of which our scientists
are yet ignorant," we were called "iconoclastic,"
and charged, in our turn, by the newspapers, with ignorance of
the law of gravitation. Iconoclastic or not, we never thought
of charging science with denying the rotation of the earth on
its axis, or its revolution around the sun. Those two lamps, at
least, in the beacon of the Academy, we thought would be kept
trimmed and burning to the end of time. But, lo! here comes a
Berlin professor and crushes our last hopes that Science should
prove herself exact in some one particular. The cycle is truly
at its lowest point, and a new era is begun. The earth stands
still, and Joshua is vindicated!

In days of old — in 1876 — the world believed in centrifugal
force, and the Newtonian theory, which explained the flattening
of the poles by the rotatory motion of the earth around its axis,
was orthodox. Upon this hypothesis, the greater portion of the
globular mass was believed to gravitate toward the equator; and
in its turn the centrifugal force, acting on the mass with its
mightiest power, forced this mass to concentrate itself on the
equator. Thus is it that the credulous scientists believed the

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* "Ultimate Deductions of Science; The Earth Motionless."
A lecture demonstrating that our globe does neither turn about
its own axis nor around the sun; delivered in Berlin by Doctor
Schoepfer. Seventh Edition.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 623 SCHOEPFER REAFFIRMS THE GEOCENTRIC SYSTEM.

earth to rotate around its axis; for, were it otherwise, there
would exist no centrifugal force, and without this force there
could be no gravitation toward the equatorial latitudes. It has
been one of the accepted proofs of the rotation of the earth,
and it is this deduction, with several others, that the Berlin
professor declares that, "in common with many other scientists,"
he "rejects."

"Is this not ridiculous, gentlemen," he concludes, "that
we, confiding in what we were taught at school, have accepted
the rotation of the earth around its axis as a fact fully demonstrated,
while there is nothing at all to prove it, and it cannot be
demonstrated? Is it not cause of astonishment that the scientists
of the whole educated world, commencing with Copernicus and Kepler,
should have begun by accepting such a movement of our planet,
and then three and a half centuries later be searching for such
proofs? But, alas! though we search, we find none, as was to be
expected. All, all is vain!"

And thus it is that at one stroke the world loses its rotation,
and the universe is bereaved of its guardians and protectors,
the centrifugal and centripetal forces! Nay, ether itself, blown
out of space, is but a "fallacy," a myth born of a bad
habit of using empty words; the sun is a pretender to dimensions
to which it was never entitled; the stars are twinkling dots,
and "were so expressly disposed at considerable distances
from one another by the Creator of the universe, probably with
the intention that they should simultaneously illumine the vast
spaces on the face of our globe" — says Dr. Schoepfer.

And is it so that even three centuries and a half have not sufficed
the men of exact science to construct one theory that not a single
university professor would dare challenge? If astronomy, the one
science built on the adamantine foundation of mathematics, the
one of all others deemed as infallible and unassailable as truth
itself, can be thus irreverently indicted for false pretences,
what have we gained by cheapening Plato to the profit of the Babinets?
How, then, do they venture to flout at the humblest observer who,
being both honest and intelligent, may say he has seen a mediumistic,
or magical phenomenon? And how dare they prescribe the "limits
of philosophical inquiry," to pass beyond which is not lawful?
And these quarrelling hypothesists still arraign as ignorant and
superstitious those giant intellects of the past, who handled
natural forces like world-building Titans, and raised mortality
to an eminence where it allied itself with the gods! Strange fate
of a century boasting to have elevated exact science to its apex
of fame, and now invited to go back and begin it's A B C
of learning again!

Recapitulating the evidence contained in this work, if we begin
with the archaic and unknown ages of the Hermetic Pimander, and
come

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 624 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

down to 1876, we find that one universal belief in magic has run
through all these centuries. We have presented the ideas of Trismegistus
in his dialogue with Asclepius; and without mentioning the thousand
and one proofs of the prevalence of this belief in the first centuries
of Christianity, to achieve our purpose we have but to quote from
an ancient and a modern author. The first will be the great philosopher
Porphyry, who several thousand years after the days of Hermes,
remarks in relation to the prevailing skepticism of his century,
the following: "We need not be amazed in seeing the vulgar
masses ([[hoi polloi]]) perceive in statues merely stone
and wood. Thus it is generally with those who, ignorant in letters,
find naught in stylae covered with inscriptions but stone,
and in written books naught but the tissue of the papyrus."
And 1,500 years later, we see Mr. Sergeant Cox, in stating the
case of the shameful prosecution of a medium by just such a blind
materialist, thus expressing his ideas: "Whether the medium
is guilty or guiltless . . . certain it is that the trial has
had the unlooked-for effect of directing the attention of the
whole public to the fact that the phenomena are asserted to
exist, and by a great number of competent investigators are
declared to be true, and of the reality of which every
person may, if he pleases, satisfy himself by actual inspection,
thus sweeping away, thus and for ever, the dark and debasing
doctrines of the materialists."

Still, in harmony with Porphyry and other theurgists, who affirmed
the different natures of the manifesting "spirits" and
the personal spirit or will of man, Mr. Sergeant Cox adds, without
committing himself any further to a personal decision: "True,
there are differences of opinions . . . and perhaps ever will
be, as to the sources of the power that is exhibited in these
phenomena; but whether they are the product of the psychic force
of the circle . . . or, if spirits of the dead be the agents,
as others say, or elemental spirits (whatever it may be) as asserted
by a third party, this fact at least is established — that man
is not wholly material, that the mechanism of man is moved and
directed by some non-material — that is, some non-molecular structure,
which possesses not merely intelligence, but can exercise
also a force upon matter, that something to which, for lack
of a better title, we have given the name of soul. These glad
tidings have by this trial been borne to thousands and tens of
thousands, whose happiness here, and hopes of a hereafter, have
been blighted by the materialists, who have preached so persistently
that soul was but a superstition, man but an automaton, mind but
a secretion, present existence purely animal, and the future —
a blank."

"Truth alone," says Pimander, "is eternal and immutable;
truth is the first of blessings; but truth is not and
cannot be on earth: it is possible that God sometimes gifts a
few men together with the faculty of

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 625 THE DIVINE PIMANDER.

comprehending divine things with that of rightly understanding
truth; but nothing is true on earth, for everything has matter
on it, clothed with a corporeal form subject to change, to alteration,
to corruption, and to new combinations. Man is not the truth,
for only that which has drawn its essence from itself, and remains
itself, and unchangeable, is true. How can that which changes
so as not to finally be recognized, be ever true? Truth, then,
is that only which is immaterial and not enclosed within a corporeal
envelope, that which is colorless and formless, exempt from change
and alteration; that which is ETERNAL. All of that which perishes
is a lie; earth is but dissolution and generation; every generation
proceeds from a dissolution; the things of earth are but appearances
andimitations of truth; they are what the picture
is to reality. The things of earth are not the TRUTH! . . . Death,
for some persons, is an evil which strikes them with profound
terror. This is ignorance. . . . Death is the destruction of the
body; the being in it dies not. . . . The material body
loses its form, which is disintegrated in course of time; the
senses which animated it return to their source and resume their
functions; but they gradually lose their passions and their desires,
and the spirit ascends to heaven to become a HARMONY.
In the first zone, it leaves behind itself the faculty of increasing
and decreasing; in the second, the power of doing evil and the
frauds of idleness; in the third, deceptions and concupiscence;
in the fourth, insatiable ambition; in the fifth, arrogance, audacity,
and temerity; in the sixth, all yearning after dishonest acquisitions;
and in the seventh, untruthfulness. The spirit thus purified
by the effect on him of the celestial harmonies, returns once
more to its primitive state, strong of a merit and power self-acquired,
and which belongs to it properly; and only then he begins to dwell
with those that sing eternally their praises of the FATHER.
Hitherto, he is placed among the powers, and as such has attained
to the supreme blessing of knowledge. He is become a GOD!
. . . No, the things of earth are not the truth."

After having devoted their whole lives to the study of the records
of the old Egyptian wisdom, both Champollion-Figeac and Champollion,
Junior, publicly declared, notwithstanding many biassed judgments
hazarded by certain hasty and unwise critics, that the Books
of Hermes "truly contain a mass of Egyptian traditions
which are constantly corroborated by the most authentic records
and monuments of Egypt of the hoariest antiquity."*

Closing up his voluminous summary of the psychological doctrines
of the Egyptians, the sublime teachings of the sacred Hermetic
books, and

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Champ.-Figeac: "Egypte," p. 143.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 626 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

the attainments of the initiated priests in metaphysical and practical
philosophy, Champollion-Figeac inquires — as he well may, in
view of the then attainable evidence — "whether there ever
was in the world another association or caste of men which could
equal them in credit, power, learning, and capability, in the
same degree of good or evil? No, never! And this caste
was subsequently cursed and stigmatized only by those
who, under I know not what kind of modern influences, have considered
it as the enemy of men and — science."*

At the time when Champollion wrote these words, Sanscrit was,
we may say, almost an unknown tongue for science. But little in
the way of a parallel could have been drawn between the respective
merits of the Brahmans and the Egyptian philosophers. Since then,
however, it has been discovered that the very same ideas, expressed
in almost identical language, may be read in the Buddhistic and
Brahmanical literature. This very philosophy of the unreality
of mundane things and the illusion of the senses — whose whole
substance has been plagiarized in our own times by the German
metaphysicians — forms the groundwork of Kapila's and Vyasa's
philosophies, and may be found in Gautama Buddha's enunciation
of the "four truths," the cardinal dogmas of his doctrine.
Pimander's expression "he is become a god" is epitomized
in the one word, Nirvana, which our learned Orientalists
most incorrectly consider as the synonym of annihilation!

This opinion of the two eminent Egyptologists is of the greatest
value to us if it were only as an answer to our opponents. The
Champollions were the first in Europe to take the student of archaeology
by the hand, and, leading him on into the silent crypts of the
past, prove that civilization did not begin with our generations;
for "though the origins of ancient Egypt are unknown, she
is found to have been at the most distant periods within the reach
of historical research, with her great laws, her established customs,
her cities, her kings, and gods"; and behind, far behind,
these same epochs we find ruins belonging to other still more
distant and higher periods of civilization. "At Thebes, portions
of ruined buildings allow us to recognize remnants of still anterior
structures, the materials of which had served for the erection
of the very edifices which have now existed for thirty-six centuries!"**
"Everything told us by Herodotus and the Egyptian priests
is found to be exact, and has been corroborated by modern scientists,"
adds Champollion.***

Whence the civilization of the Egyptians came, will be shown in
volume II., and in this respect it will be made
to appear that our deductions, though based upon the traditions
of the Secret Doctrine, run par-

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Ibid., p. 119.

** Ibid., p. 2.

*** Ibid., p. 11.

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 627 THE EGYPTIAN MENES MENTIFIED.

allel with those of a number of most respected authorities. There
is a passage in a well-known Hindu work which may well be recalled
in this connection.

"Under the reign of Viswamitra, first king of the Dynasty
of Soma-Vanga, in consequence of a battle which lasted five days,
Manu-Vina, heir of the ancient kings, being abandoned by the Brahmans,
emigrated with all his companions, passing through Arya, and the
countries of Barria, till he came to the shores of Masra"
(History of India, by Collouca-Batta). Unquestionably
this Manu-Vina and Menes, the first Egyptian King, are identical.

Arya, is Eran (Persia); Barria, is Arabia, and Masra, was the
name of Cairo, which to this day is called, Masr, Musr,
and Misro. Phoenician history names Maser as one of the ancestors
of Hermes.

And now we will bid farewell to thaumatophobia and its advocates,
and consider thaumatomania under its multifarious aspects. In
vol. II., we intend to review the "miracles" of Paganism
and weigh the evidence in their favor in the same scales with
Christian theology. There is a conflict not merely impending but
already begun between science and theology, on the one hand, and
spirit and its hoary science, magic, on the other. Something of
the possibilities of the latter have already been displayed, but
more is to come. The petty, mean world, for whose approving nod
scientists and magistrates, priests and Christians compete, have
begun their latter-day crusade by sentencing in the same year
two innocent men, one in France, the other in London, in defiance
of law and justice. Like the apostle of circumcision, they are
ever ready to thrice deny an unpopular connection for fear of
ostracism by their own fellows. The Psychomantics and the Psychophobists
must soon meet in fierce conflict. The anxiety to have their phenomena
investigated and supported by scientific authorities has given
place with the former to a frigid indifference. As a natural result
of so much prejudice and unfairness as have been exhibited, their
respect for scientists is waning fast, and the reciprocal epithets
bandied between the two parties are becoming far from complimentary
to either. Which of them is right and which wrong, time will soon
show and future generations understand. It is at least safe to
prophesy that the Ultima Thule of God's mysteries, and the key
to them are to be sought elsewhere than in the whirl of Avogadro's
molecules.

People who either judge superficially, or, by reason of their
natural impatience would gaze at the blazing sun before their
eyes are well fitted to bear lamp-light, are apt to complain of
the exasperating obscurity of language which characterizes the
works of the ancient Hermetists and their successors. They declare
their philosophical treatises on magic incomprehensible. Over
the first class we can afford to waste no

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 628 THE VEIL OF ISIS.

time; the second, we would beg to moderate their anxiety, remembering
those sayings of Espagnet — "Truth lies hid in obscurity,"
and "Philosophers never write more deceitfully than when
plainly, nor ever more truly than when obscurely." Furthermore,
there is a third class, whom it would compliment too much to say
that they judge the subject at all. They simply denounce ex-cathedra.
The ancients they treat as dreamy fools, and though but physicists
and thaumatophobic positivists, they commonly claim a monopoly
of spiritual wisdom!

We will select Irenaeus Philaletha to answer this latter class.
"In the world our writings shall prove a curious-edged knife;
to some they shall carve out dainties, but to others they shall
only serve to cut their fingers; yet we are not to be blamed,
for we do seriously admonish all who shall attempt this work that
they undertaketh the highest piece of philosophy in nature; and
though we write in English, yet our matter will be as hard as
Greek to some, who will think, nevertheless, that they understand
as well, when they misconstrue our meaning most perversely; for
is it imaginable that they who are fools in nature should be wise
in books, which are testimonies unto nature?"

The few elevated minds who interrogate nature instead of prescribing
laws for her guidance; who do not limit her possibilities by the
imperfections of their own powers; and who only disbelieve because
they do not know, we would remind of that apothegm of Narada,
the ancient Hindu philosopher:

"Never utter these words: 'I do not know this — therefore
it is false.' "
"One must study to know, know to understand, understand to
judge."